Life is a Series of Dogs Eating Squirrels

I wonder how funny that must have looked.

I mean, if you had been driving by our house you would have seen me dump all the mail all over the driveway as I attempted to wrestle with the mail, the rolling trash bin, and the two recycling buckets to bring them in from the street and keep walking as if I still had everything completely under control, leaving a pile of envelopes scattered in the driveway like a boat’s wake, I think you probably would have laughed.

It’s not the most stupid thing I’ve ever done. And, by the way, I think that when a person types that sentence, he should be allowed to write “it’s not the mostest stupidest thing I ever done,” just for contextual impact. But. I thought, as I was walking back to the end of the driveway to retrieve the mail, I was trying to save time, and I ended up wasting more time.

How often is life like that? How often do shortcuts bite our asses?

I am better in this regard than I was when I was 20. Am better at a lot of stuff than I was when I was 20. Am better at waiting. Am better at living here and now. Am better at counting blessings (look…see…there goes one now…). Am seeing for real and true how much youth is wasted on the young. I know of some people in my high school class who apparently knew then what I know now. Not many of them though.

Meanwhile: We are on beast lockdown here at the farm.

We’re not sure if the dog attacked the squirrel and rendered him stunned or if the dog found him that way. We’re liking to think the latter. Probably was. From the way the dog set the squirrel down and sat to look at it, I reckon he probably just found the thing that way. Regardless, it was clear the mongrel didn’t know what to do with it. Now if the little one had gotten to said rodent, that would have been a different story. That’s how it tends to work. The big dumb one finds the wilderness toys, and the little one, he steals it from the big one and proceeds to do his part for entropy.

Actually, I’m told that’s probably not how it happened. I’m told that, indeed, what probably happened is that the little one caught the squirrel unawares and disabled him, and that the big one then played through. I will still continue to imagine that the poor thing had some sort of diving accident and that the beasts simply found him that way.

So here we are this afternoon on my Saturday. I know. It’s Friday. But Career #7 requires that I work some funky hours. Not that I’m complaining. It’s the best day of the week and I’m writing this in the living room. Most people are at this moment wishing the clock would move more quickly. And I’m here with Charlie the Persistent Pain in the Ass Dog. Whine whine whine. Please let me out to eat the squirrel corpse. Please please please can I go eat the squirrel corpse. Please, sir? Please? There is carrion out there, and I would very much like to help myself to it. Please? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE? Oh good grief, here he goes again.

I reckon there’s not much to take from this little episode except maybe that, you know. Sometimes you’re the dog. Sometimes you’re the squirrel.

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