A couple of weeks ago, I was heading out of the house to go to work and noticed something strange near the rear of car. I thought it was another large bug or a wad of wet paper, but it turned out to be a newborn baby bird.
The kids had already left for school. I took a picture for some odd reason. I don’t know, it was just strange to me because there didn’t seem any way a baby bird could fall from a nest in that spot. When I got back from work in the evening, it was gone.
Fast forward to today.
Just as I was pulling into the driveway, I noticed another dead critter: a squirrel. I’m not sure if I ran over the sucker when I left after lunch this afternoon, but it was a sight: rear legs spread, front legs neatly crossed, no eyeballs. I called Susan, who had the kids at karate to let her know and to walk her through my process of policing up the carcass:
- get plastic bag
- get shovel
- scoop carcass into plastic bag
- get talked out of putting carcass in trash
- toss carcass in woods
- continue saying, “That’s nasty!” throughout whole process
(You can tell I grew up in the city or I’d probably 1. pick up the sucker by the tail and toss it in the woods, or 2. pick up the sucker, skin it and have it for dinner like the character Skink in a Carl Hiassen novel)
Of course, when Susan mentioned it to the kids, they really, really wanted to see it. I mentioned to Camille after dinner that I’d walk her out to see it. She turned up her nose, of course, but Abby had her shoes on and was tugging at my arm to go out.
We took a walk after dinner around one of the parks in the neighborhood and they got their chance to see a different dead squirrel. This one was flipped over with its entrails hanging out. Camille squealed “Eeewwww!!!” and dashed off. Abby stopped dead, pulled my arm and dragged me back to get a better look.
Yuck.
But, I guess if you want to be a veterinarian like she does, being keenly interested in dead animals as well as live ones is par for the course.