So you had a bad day.

But were your front incisors growing full circle through the roof of your mouth?

Years ago, on top of an old wood fencepost, I found a portion of a ground squirrel skull. Rodent incisors grow continuously, kept the right length by their constant gnawing and nibbling. Healthy squirrels teeth occlude perfectly, top to bottom, and grow fast enough to keep feeding good tooth, but not so fast as to escape being ground back to optimal length. This perfectly calibrated growth rate is a wonder to consider, but when things go wrong, as for my squirrel on the fence post, the end is ghastly. There’s braces for people, but not for ground squirrels.

Did this squirrel suffer an injury? Or was it deformed at birth? How did it survive long enough for its teeth to grow full curl? 

The next time you have a day when you wish the sun would just go down, click your teeth together. All good? Then carry on, you could be maloccluded and you aren’t.