Friday, November 02, 2007

Murder, Incorporated

I'm sort of a snob about my driving. Not that I'm super-talented or anything; I hit plenty of curbs when I'm parking. It's only that I'm careful in and around our town. Now that I spend nearly every day at the elementary school and with our children and their friends, I sort of feel as though I know every family in town.

And I don't want to kill anybody's child. So I'm careful. And I'm a little arrogant about how careful I am. "Check me out," I tell myself as I'm rolling along at 30 mph. "I mean, did you see that full stop back there?"

And then it happened. Yesterday, as I was crawling along one of our little suburban roads (with a line of beeping, road-raging maniacs on my tail), I squashed a squirrel.

There was just no avoiding the damn rodent. He practically threw himself under the mini-van. In fact ... now that I think back on it a little bit, I'm sure that I saw a look of hopelessness on his little varmint face. Despondency, even.

So what do you think ... squirrel suicide?