Opinion: Rats and Turtles and Worms, Oh My!

(Feb. 3) -- I'll be honest, nothing about this headline made sense to me at first: "Iran Launches Rat, Two Turtles and Worms Into Space." Everything seemed wrong for a moment, like when you drink milk out of the carton and then realize that it's orange juice. Iran has a space program? And they're launching worms??

My first instinct is to poke gentle but respectful fun at those wild-eyed crazies. I mean, Iran has made One Giant Leap in the Space Race -- all the way up to 1955! Did you know that the United States launched a monkey (superior to the rat-turtle-worm trifecta in almost every way) in 1948?

I mean no disrespect to my dear Persian friends, but seriously, the list of nations that can, at best, launch animals into space is now Iran, Turkmenistan and Chad -- sorry, that's not the country of Chad; that's Chad Herzog, the nerdy eighth-grader who lives behind me. Very smart lad. I cannot find my cat.

So, what do we have to fear from a country that is 50 years behind us in spaceflight technology? At most, we should lobby for their nutty president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for not strapping a political prisoner into the rocket's command pod. (Actually, are we sure he didn't?)

Yes, I think we're sure, because who would lie about sending into space such an odd collection of animals? A rat, two turtles and worms. Worms! What does that even prove? What do you test them for when they return?

"Wiggling?"

"Check!"

"OK ... that's all I got."

I mean, doesn't it sound like the director of the Iranian Aerospace Organization just grabbed his kid's science project on his way to the launch pad that morning?

Hahahahahaha -- But hey ...

What does it say about their missile program if they can put a rocket into orbit? Isn't it only One Small Step from there to being able to target any spot on earth with a nuclear-armed ICBM?

Why is this getting less funny?

And hey, didn't President Obama just cancel NASA's moon program? So Iran is 50 years behind us? How long are we going to pause while the competition is sprinting its little heart out? And how much do they really need to close the gap in this race before they can do us real harm? Are those animals they launched an analogy? A message? Is Ahmadinejad the rat? Are America and Russia the turtles, with our heads pulled in? Are the worms ... OK, I have no idea who the worms are.

What I'm saying is, Iran's launch is easy to poke fun at, but it ought to be very hard to ignore.
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Dave George is a social media marketer by day and a stand-up comedian by night. You can follow him on Twitter -- @DaveGeorge_DC.

Dave's previous op-eds for AOL News include: A State of the Union Speech We'd Really Like to See and A Guide for the Unemployed.