Half-Dead Squirrels and Other Animal Adventures

I am not an animal person.

I mean, it's not that I hate them. But I've never really had that X factor that draws people to animals. I'll pet my brothers' dogs, but I can't bring myself to touch anything else until I've washed my hands. My in-laws have beautiful horses, but (wouldn't you know it?) I'm allergic to them. Cats shed hair everywhere (and I just VACUUMED) and I essentially live in fear of hitting a deer, finding a mouse in the house, hitting a squirrel with the car or being ambushed a la Alfred Hitchcock's Birds.

If animals keep their distance, I'm good. But my personal space expands by about ten times when any sort of animal is around. That's why I stiffen up when big dogs come sniff me or there's a bird in the house.

It's also why leaving my apartment now requires the mental preparation of an Olympic luge athlete.

A week or so ago, Ryan, Lyla and I were walking from the parking lot to our apartment and (as usual) I was in the middle of some elaborate story. Then, I happened to glance at the ground where I was about to step. And I saw the saddest, most disgusting, most disturbing thing I've ever laid eyes on—a dead squirrel, laying on its side being picked at by maggots. My foot dangled in mid-step six inches above it.

This squirrel looks much happier than the one I saw. He's probably just happy to be alive.
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So I did the only thing I could do. I ran away like a crazy person, gagging and trying in vain to forget the image that had been immediately branded itself on my brain. I felt sick for several minutes. Ryan laughed and laughed.

After that, it was like a flood of weird animal escapades. Ryan came home with this news a few days later: "I was coming in and I saw a half-dead squirrel—I mean, no, it was all the way dead. But only half of it was there, so I guess a half—half of a dead squirrel."

A day or two later the grounds crew pulled a FIVE FOOT SNAKE out of the bushes at our complex.

The snake probably looked nothing like this. But it was, in fact, a snake.
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A woman at church said she found her cat dead after being mauled by some sort of wild animal—"Probably a coyote or a bobcat." What the heck is going on here?!

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I felt a piece of dirt on the side of my foot walking through the grass the other day, and my immediate reaction was to scream and kick my shoe off. Ryan looked concerned. Maybe I should be too.

I guess the reality is that we don't live in the Icelandic tundra of the western United States anymore, so all animal life doesn't die off every winter. And that makes for some pretty weird stuff. If I don't come back after going to check the mail, you'll know why. Wish me luck.