Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday.

Hank, some days... some days, I just want to be a professional critic of gifs [jifs] featuring animals interrupting sporting events.

"Anfield Cat" is of course a classic of the genre, in which a cat finds itself on the pitch for a Liverpool game. Is the cat trying to reflect something about Liverpool's own confused, inconsistent defending? No, I think Anfield Cat's indecision is best read as a metaphor for human life itself - isolated, afraid, but still resilient.

"Squirrel interrupts U.S. Open" reminds us that it's not only human animals who can display their talents on a tennis court. The height of that jump, the squirrel's balletic run, followed by a pause at the center of the net to ensure that everyone is watching, and then yes, observe that jaunty run! Ultimately, Hank, sports is not only about winning and losing; it's also about displaying what physical bodies can do, including and perhaps especially squirrel bodies.

"Dog Pooping at Baseball Game" wouldn't usually be my kind of GIF [guiff], Hank, I prefer the higher-brow animals interrupting sporting events animations. But despite the grainy, low-fied camera work here, there's something very compelling. The dog is literally crapping on the game, as if to say, "I reject your obsessive fascination with sports!" The dog seems to be asking, "Which of us is really sentient: you, mindlessly watching men attempt to hit a ball with a wooden stick, or me, elegantly articulating my feelings via defecation?"

Now, of course, "Dog on the Pitch" is so common that it's a world unto itself, but what moves me about "Dog on the Pitch" in all its iterations is its reminder by the dogs, that sports are ultimately about play.

For me, the comic pinnacle here is "Goalkeeper Dogcatcher FAIL", but the greatest of these gifs [guiffs], unquestionably, is "Drunk Dog Wants to Play". this swift and relentless attack of the ball asks many important questions: Are there drugs in the ball? What kind of drugs could you put in the soccer ball? Would it affect the performance of the ball? And most importantly, why wasn't Air Bud 3: World Pup a better movie?

Like all great gifs [jifs], "Mexican Drunk Dog Wants to Play" refuses to answer these questions directly or in a fully satisfying way; instead, this work of art leaves us unsettled, but enlarged.

"Fox Absconds with Golf Ball" is another brilliant rejection of sport itself. The fox seems to be saying, "You believe you can come onto this course and escape the ambiguity and randomness that haunts every moment of life on Earth, but no matter how well you water the greens, and mow the fairway, I will be here to remind you that you will never escape it!"

And that brings us to what is, in my opinion, the greatest animal interrupting a sporting event GIF [ ] of all time. Hank, most sports stories lack a complex moral narrative - like, you want Rooney to play because he's little and full of hustle; you want that guy from The Blind Side to guy that guy from the Baltimore Ravens, because he had a hard life, and Sandra Bullock loves him. You want Teen Wolf to make the big shot, because he has long suffered under the twin burdens of teenager-hood and werewolfdom.

But Hank, while we crave that moral simplicity, the truly great animals interrupting sporting event gifs [jifs] refuse to give it to us. And in my mind, the greatest among them is of course "Pine Marten Invades Swiss Soccer Match". First, there's the shocking surprise that Switzerland has a professional football league, not to mention the quality of the footage and the camerawork. Then there's the full-throated commitment to both the pine marten, who wishes to stay on the pitch, and its human defender, who wishes to remove it from the pitch.

Now, Hank, in most stories, the heroes are simply good and the villains are simply evil, but for whom are we to root in this GIF [guiff]? When the pine marten bites the human, we naturally feel put off; it isn't sporting to bite a fellow competitor. On the other hand, the defender has clearly fouled the pine marten, tackling it from behind as it races toward the goal. That's a red card! Who is the victim? Who is the perpetrator? Who is good? Who is bad? Like all great interrogations of the universe, "Pine Marten Invades Swiss Soccer Pitch" offers no easy answer; instead, it asks us to consider the possibility that the pine marten, the defender, and indeed, each of us, contain multitudes.

Hank, I'll see you on Friday.