i’ve seen more roadkill in the past two weeks than i have in my entire life.
i was walking home from the library last week or so and there was a dead squirrel on the ground. it took me a while to figure out what it was. there have been dead squirrels on the street everywhere. have there always been this many dead squirrels? or am i just noticing them now or something?
also related to this subject: on wednesday i was waiting to meet with father peter and i was sitting upstairs at newman and a squirrel approached the window i was facing and picked up a small brown fuzzy object and was playing with it. it took me a while to figure out what the furry thing was too, but i did, when i noticed that the fuzzy things were feathers and that the squirell was chewing on the dead bird’s withered knotty leg. oh it was revolting. so i got up and made sudden movements and scared the squirrel, who dropped his plaything and bounded away. i guess the little brown bird had died after hitting its head on the window.
once when i was little (really little, this is pre-annie) a hummingbird hit his head on our window back in sj. it was kinda dazed. we picked it up and put it in a little box stuffed with kleenex. it blinked for a few minutes and looked around and we petted its sleek green head. my mom was lifting its wings and telling it to fly and it did, eventually, darting away in an arc like water that was dyed green with food coloring tossed out from a bucket.
another time when i was little (again, pre-annie) ray and i were singing “row row row your boat” and rocking back and forth. he had the misfortune to be rocking back and forth on the back of the sofa, right next to the big window. so he crashed and broke one of the big windowpanes. he didn’t fall out of the window… once he sat there and started crying and i knew he was perfectly fine, not even a scratch, i remember wanting to laugh really hard. i’m wondering why i found it so immensely funny. i remember feeling distinctly guilty for thinking it was funny–now i’m rationalizing and thinking perhaps i was glad that he wasn’t hurt because i was pretty shocked by the splintering sound–so i stood dumbly to the side when my mom fussed over him and slunk to my room, feeling guilty that i wasn’t a good enough big sister to warn him not to rock on the back of a sofa near a large pane of glass.