squirrel

Today when I was driving, almost home, I approached this "thing" in the road that turned out to be a freshly-hit squirrel, flopping sickeningly with a twisted, crushed neck.  I had a split second to decide whether I should drive over him and end his misery, or swerve around and leave him to suffer to death.  

I swerved, bit my lip, crossed myself, and whispered that I'd forget about it in a minute; I'd move on with my life.  I hate squirrels, well, I used to, when they'd leap onto my mom's birdfeeders when I was young and chew them open to eat all of the seed, and I'd throw my dad's shoes at them while they clucked angrily at me from high branches.  Earlier today, though, I was walking to my car and saw a funny little squirrel fellow go up a flight of stairs that only led to a door.  I peered around the corner of the cement stairway to see he'd jumped onto a windowsill at about eye-height and was peering likewise at me.  

I am becoming more sentimental with age.  (?)  I view everything I love with such fondness, particularly animals and nature, and the people I like in secret ways, documenting their features in a mental museum I can peruse when I daydream.  Sometimes it feels like my whole life is a desperate quest for a new art to describe my love, and words dutifully fill in while I'm looking.