Together Fur-ever

Last night my mother and I went for a constitutional. (This is a fancy way of saying we went for a walk as a benefit to our health, but we didn't actually walk hard enough to generate a sweat. As my mom likes to say, "We don't walk for exercise! Only for beauty." Your guess is as good as mine as to what this actually means.) We strolled through her neighborhood -- which makes sense since it's safe and there are nice houses to look at. The last time I went for a walk in my own neighborhood, I discovered a spray-painted note on the sidewalk threatening death by machete to all white people. And I swear I live in a nice neighborhood. Although I guess if you've gotta go, machete is a pretty bad ass way to die. Anyway.

We rounded a corner, and there in the middle of the street lay two dead squirrels. When I see roadkill, I choose to look away and pretend that the animal is just taking a siesta. I was ready to walk on by. Such is the cycle of life. My mom, on the other hand, chose to get emotionally involved. I pleaded with her to continue walking, pointing out that rigor had already set in (I watch CSI), and there was nothing we could do for them. Not to mention, they were simply covered with germs. Ignoring my sage advice to move on, my mother decided to go in for a closer look. "Oh God!" she proclaimed. "One's a baby!" It was at about this point that I decided to walk a few yards away so that no one would think I knew her.

From a safe distance, I watched as she procured a giant stick -- it would have made a nice walking stick, in fact, if we'd still been walking. First she dealt with the momma squirrel. Gently, and with as much dignity as one can muster while poking a dead squirrel with a stick, she pushed the squirrel to the edge of the road. A truck had pulled up by this point and was waiting to pass, but my mother was determined to save the squirrel carcasses. She went back for the baby squirrel, pushing with the squirrel-stick in her left hand, and holding one finger up on her right hand as if to tell the truck driver, "Please wait. I am doing the Lord's work."

She finally got the baby squirrel a safe distance off the road so that it would not be squished (this actually takes longer than you would imagine), but she continued pushing him along with her stick. I entreated her to hurry up, because by now there were two cars waiting to pass, and it had become fairly obvious that I was, in fact, related to the lady with the stick. She paid me no heed. I watched as she nudged the baby squirrel closer to the mother. She poked a few more times, and it became apparent that she wasn't just pushing the squirrels out of the road. No, she was carefully arranging them in a lovely tableau. Like a modern day, fur-covered La Pietà. (Blasphemous, I know.) "At least now they're hugging," she explained.

Motherhood is a strange thing I guess. You want to do the best for your kids, but sometimes you inadvertently lead them into the street only to be hit by a car, and have your dead bodies prodded at by a stranger with a stick. I'm pretty sure the squirrels would have been better off if they had met their end by machete. At least then they would have some street cred.

Amen.

(photo from the delightfully bizarre sugarbushsquirrel.com. You can thank me later for the link.)