Once upon a time there was an iguana. And the iguana lived in a house with humans who had lots of tasty houseplants.
Now, the iguana didn’t always chew on the houseplants, and perhaps not all iguanas do chew on houseplants, but let’s say polls showed that 10% of iguanas were at least sympathetic to the chewing of houseplants.
And while iguanas can’t talk to threaten to chew your houseplants, there had been strong indicators that the iguana in question had an inclination to do so. Attempts were made that the humans thwarted. The iguana seemed rather interested in eating these houseplants.
And one day the humans came home to find many little iguana-mouth-shaped chunks missing out of their tasty houseplants.
Is it really so bigoted to suspect that maybe, just maybe, it might have possibly been an iguana who chewed the houseplants instead of say, the budgie in its cage or the fish in the aquarium or the cat, none of whom had ever seemed interested in the houseplants?
There are these things called statistics, probabilities, and credible threats. You might have learned about them in school had you taken any hard sciences instead of sociology and art history.
Sure, not all iguanas chew houseplants. But some of them do. And most other pets don’t. It’s not crazy or evil to direct one’s investigations and suspicions in the direction of the iguana when your houseplants have chew marks on them.
