the day of dead animals
on thursday i met my very best friend amy for lunch. normally we go on fridays but she asked to go thursday and since i took the whole damn day off from work, i figured why not?
so i’m walking down 13th to downtown at approximately quarter after noon and just as i’m strolling along the park between K and I streets, i notice a dead squirrel. well, not so much notice as i was attacked by it. you know when you’re walking along and you’re not expecting to see something and it sort of just jumps out and startles you and you gasp audibly like a fool even though it’s dead and can’t move? attacked.
i always have an eye out for roadkill while i’m driving so one would think that i would do the same when traveling by foot. i’m the first to point out a dead deer, or when we were traveling south this summer, a dead armadillo (mikey’s slow reactions prohibited him from seeing them–i’d long since passed the poor lil guys by the time he looked up from his ifriend), or, heartbreakingly, a dead dog. 
so this dead squirrel scared the bedazzler out of me and i sort of laughed and carried on one more step, then another and then–GASP! another dead squirrel! it too scared the living hell out of me. i certainly was not expecting to see a dead squirrel much less TWO and within feet of each other. after the first one, i immediately thought, well, i’m pretty sure i won’t see another dead squirrel on my walk today to meet amy so i can relax and just enjoy this unseasonably warm weather. boy, was i wrong! what is going on in this park?
this is what i think happened (or something close to it):
two squirrels were fighting over a nut, early in the morning before all the pedestrians and cars take over the city, and they’re fighting and it’s actually quite juvenile when you think about it, i mean, nuts are hardly in short supply in the park. suddenly, there’s a gathering of forest creatures–rats, pigeons and other squirrels, maybe a racoon wanders out of her dumpster diving alley to take a look at all the commotion, and slowly, quietly at first, the animals start chanting: two squirrels enter! one squirrel leaves! two squirrels enter! one squirrel leaves!
yes, it’s thunderdome rodent style.
and they fought to the death. both of them. and then i’m sure some other greedy squirrel or chipmunk siezed the opportunity, stole the nut and bushy high-tailed it outta there.
OR
just a few feet further down the sidewalk i come across a dead pigeon and so maybe this is what happened:
one squirrel finds a nut and the other squirrel wants it real bad, so he beats the hell out of the first one (who dies) and then grabs the nut and runs for the nearest tree. but that pigeon wanted it too even though i don’t think pigeons eat nuts, but whatever, it’s my story. so the pigeon kamikazis his way into the tree, attacking the 2nd squirrel, they tumble out of the lofty branches, down down down, fighting and clawing at each other, beak snapping, bushy tail whipping, until they meet pavement where upon the pigeon snaps his neck and dies. the squirrel, though barely clinging to life, musters enough energy to crawl away from the sidewalk into the grass, just feet from his first victim, where he coughs out his last little squirrel breath.
and all the gawking pigeons and rats and mice and chipmunks, shrug their shoulders and head back to doing whatever they normally do.
after lunch, on my walk home up 14th, i try not to look at the same things twice in one day, so alternating routes helps accomplish this, i notice outside a bland grey building right down by where concrete meets the concrete of the sidewalk, a droopy eyed pigeon who, while still alive, is certainly acting strange as he’s just standing facing the wall, not really moving, but under his heavy lids, his eye is sort of keeping tabs on what’s going on around him. no one else seemed to notice him, so i watced for a while and all he did was stand and face the wall. it was not unlike the final image captured by the camera in The Blair Witch Project.
maybe he was mourning the loss of his nut hungry friend. or planning his revenge on the squirrel community.
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