Dead Squirrel

The day started off with falling flurries and nose dripping cld. After a not too long walk, yet too long of a bus ride and a way too long of a day at work it was time to take that same the extended travel home. This week the trip home entails a lot of walking and a chapters worth of a bus ride home. How often do people get to start the day bundled up with the chills just to shed the scarf and jackets due to a raging sun? Feeling the exhaustion of my day the solitude of a commute and the smell of spring sprung is the reward for hard work. All this preemptive literary teasing is illusionary text meant to transport you on a trip somewhere else. To that mental space I was in just was before I turned the corner with the sun on my face lost in the objects come to life.

My normal bus drops me off across the street from where I live making it a quick walk home. However, the time schedule and dropping out late from work I am forced to take alternate route one. This still drops me close to home at least from my perspective, but it consists of a couple more blocks of an evening stroll. I thank the bus driver as I disembark only blocks from home. The quaint and comfy neighborhood stretch of the legs is as inconvenient as melting ice cream. It's still gonna taste good. My mind slips into auto-run as I turn the corner to the suburb. The commute is long so these walks in the sinking sun are my moments of peace and meditation. Cruising up the sunny-side of the street I see in the distance the pieces of a family rotating their goods from the car to the house. Dragging bits of backpack as they struggle up a front porch.

Taking in the whole of my surroundings I catch a cute fur ball people watching from an attic window like an old german woman. Pillow placed perfectly in the windowsill with a glean in their eyes that tells you they see you. It is a herding dog, I immediately think of Coltrain from the TV series Bosch. So chill, no barking just the ever watchful eye. Smiling as I walk by talking to the trees as though they hear me I turn my attention back to the way home and hear the car door slam. There is still a young girl standing there on the sidewalk. Holding the disorganization of her day in her hands without actually going into the house. She is just staring. Staring at the ground. I begin to wonder if she is staring at something she dropped. Or if she is just lost in time and space as some young kids can get.

She is definitely in her own world. Those moments of silence during a pause of havoc when you just shut off and fall into a moment. I am not purposefully quiet as I make my way towards the young girl, yet I continue to wonder what she is staring at as I coast closer and closer. She is so transfixed in her state of mind that she doesn't notice me until the crackling of stone under my shoes is too much to ignore and my shadow casts ever closer. I admire her peace as I make my way closer. Being drawn to my attention the girl startles out of her trance. Avoiding prolonged eye contact she turns toward the house and Charlie Brown's away. I want to smile at her thinking we have a moment of beauty to share on this gracious spring day but she just ignores me. Peaked with curiosity I gaze to the spot where the girl was staring so intently to identify what had drawn her attention for so long.

It takes me awhile to identify what the object is, and I wonder if that's what she was confused about too. What is that oddly shaped, dirt encrusted contracted object? It take me a moment to follow the curved lines and material of what I am see until I place it; dead squirrel. At the base of the tree on the hard dirt is the stiffened corpse of a squirrel. I tell you as someone who stops to smell the roses and hug the occasional beauty of a tree a dead animal was not what I was expecting the young girl to be so silently transfixed on. The initial response should be disgust, regardless of micro reactions dead corpses should instinctually incite a response of disgust.

It made me wonder what the girl was actually contemplating for so long. She was so lost and absorbed in the presence of it. My immediate thought was that she was admiring the object. Consumed with the causality of death. There did not seem to be a sadness to its death that she was responding to, just a reality. Of the many places I have lived it is only here where I now live that I have noticed the high amount of squirrel corpses. They are present in every place on earth and I know they do not have particularly long life spans but cities have always been good at maintaining a retrieval process. That and maybe there are enough foxes or hunters that get the old ones in good time.

Regardless, I was struck with a sense of dread when I felt the energy of the young girl and assessed the unregistered data that was now being translated from the moments before. She did not call out to her mom or sister to ask what it was. She did not make a big deal or throw a tantrum about how there was a dead squirrel she almost stepped on getting out of the car. In fact she gave no acknowledgement to her family about the animal at all. This startled me. The moment she realized someone had been watching her she didn't engage to ask if I knew what it was or say something childish, instead she ignore me. I interpreted her movement and response to my presence in a whole new light. It seemed to reflect the characteristics of someone shadowed by a little shame and embarrassment at being caught.

When I turn away from the sight of the stiff dirty squirrel I take a glance back at the girl shuffling silently up the porch and hope that my instincts are not correct. There was no disgust in her body language just interest. I wonder if this girl will grow to be a sociopath and if her parents already see a little of that in her. Perhaps she will be part of the 3% of the population that are diagnosed as sociopathic. Even more hopeful is she will be that sector of the 3% that are fully functional in society. Do you remember any times when you were a child that you came across a dead animal in nature? What kind of response did you have?