About Snouts
The African anteater’s sniffling snout scavenges and snoops inside the swarming anthill. Such versatility those snouts— snorting, snickering, snarling, snorkelling, snuffling and salivating. Wet noses of tapirs and pigs and moles and boxers secrete slimy solutions: mucous, snot and drool that drip, slide and slither. Prominent proboscises probe and poke where they don’t belong, producing panic and repellence. (Do I hear Big Bird’s endearing buddy Snuffleupegus howling in protest?) Snail snouts are less salient than those of beetles and boars, while mashed snouts are the pride of pugs.
A particularly prominent human protuberance propels its owner into the hands of a snout surgeon.
Reshaping is required to fit society’s standards of snout beauty. Unless ugly is the objective. It’s expected for villains to bear big schnauzes: Scrooge, Captain Hook, wicked queens, nasty stepmothers and ogres under bridges. Ugly is the trademark of the villain: a hooked dripping schnauze sporting a pimple and a hair, black attire, piercing, beady eyes, bad breath, humpbacked, crooked fingers with long pointed nails.
To be fair to snouts, pronounced proboscises were deemed regal in the lands of pharaohs and Incan princes. Can you picture the proud Native American chief, Sitting Bull, with a snub nose?
Clearly the beauty of snouts lies in the snout of the beholder.
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