The Squirrel

I don’t know if she had been injured or was born deformed. She had no tail, and she didn’t scamper across the road in front of my car. Squirrels scamper, you know, but this one limped and shuffled. Slowly. She may have had only three legs, or if she had four, they were not whole. She was not whole.

She saw me, and I thought I could see in her eyes a clear understanding of her own vulnerability in my presence. No defiant flick of her tail. No quick flight up a tree, the escape and refuge for all the squirrels around here. No. This one paused in the middle of the street and then again at the curb to look at me, perhaps to determine how much time she had before I might come and do her harm, and then she crawled under the ground cover at the side of Mrs. Lindell’s house.

I don’t like squirrels. I’ve said it more than once. And I’ve often wished for a BB gun so I could get rid of the squirrels, or at least one of them, and once I borrowed a sling shot but couldn’t use it, after all. I don’t kill things (except plants and that's not intentional).

I have called squirrels rats with bushy tails. Pretty apt. I have called them pests. Also apt. But this squirrel changed me, broke my heart, aroused in me that protective nature most humans have, and taught me something about the worth of a life, even a squirrel’s life. I’m not putting this into quite the right words, but I felt nothing but sympathy and good will towards this squirrel. I would like it if she could know that. I would like it if I could hang on to those feelings.