Dead squirrel.

I usually have a window of time during the day. Sometimes not long enough to drive back home. So, often I will drive around the country side. Berks and Lebanon county have great scenic countrysides once you get off the highways.

I meandered around a new way today. Not exactly sure where I was going but enjoying the rolling hills, sunny skies and blessed weather. There were really grand things to see.

As I was coming down and around and up a little road in my Mazda, which handles really well by the way, I saw some action on the road. I wasn't sure if something was hit, dead or alive, as my vision picked some other movements frantically moving around this thing in the road. I got closer and I realized it was a dead squirrel that was probably freshly hit.

While a dead squirrel on the road is quite common, I was moved by a couple things as I stopped before the action. The "dead" animal was on his belly, not all that smashed into the road, I mean not like a pancake. Its eyes were wide open. It may have still barely been alive, but I doubt it.

What was even more sadly fascinating was that there must have been five or six squirrels going crazy around this scene. I clearly can't get inside the head of a little squirrel but I felt that they were experiencing an incredible of hopelessness. So hopeless, in fact, that they had lost their little minds and were moving senselessly. They probably wanted to help but couldn't. One of their own had been killed by an coming car.

Luckily, there was no one driving behind me, because I would've lost all awareness of it amidst this roadkill funeral. As it were, I stopped and waited for these little mourners to clear off of the road and into the trees. Maybe I was a mourner too. I've seen things die and it's never pretty. It's that universal empty expression that will appear on all of our faces at one time.

Another senseless squirrel homocide.