The Squirrel Under My Car

A couple of Sundays ago, a squirrel jumped into traffic ahead of the family SUV about a hundred yards ahead in a two-lane highway. The squirrel scampered almost past the fast lane (on which I was driving) and then stopped as a car buzzed by it on the slow lane. The squirrel scampered back towards the median and then reversed back towards across the original destination ... as our SUV bore down on it.

A split second passed as I silently pleaded for it to get out of the way. I glanced at my rear view mirror and knew that with cars zooming behind me, I wasn't going to slam on the brakes.

The squirrel zig-zagged back and forth across my lane, seemingly confused, and as we drove past it we heard a sickening "thump".

"Arrgh, you killed it!" Sarah wailed, "Did you see that poor squirrel? The poor thing was confused and didn't know which way to go!" as I quickly defended myself, pointing out the cars that were tailgating me and not wanting to be our family at risk to be rear-ended by a stampede of cars.

My three-year old daughter sitting in the back apparently was too busy singing and missed out on what had transpired but wanted to know what the ruckus was and inquired, "What happened? What did daddy kill?" (Daniel was strangely silent with what I thought was a half-smile on his face. I'm pretty sure it was because he was just spacing out. Of course, if it was a case of nascent sadism, that's very disturbing, so I'll have to keep my eye on that.)

Before soon everyone was talking over each other, with my wife repeatedly lamenting "Poor squirrel! Why didn't you stop?" and Sophia continuing to ask repeatedly "What did daddy kill?" I managed to say between gritted teeth to my wife, "Honey, drop it - I don't need to relive it, and I don't want to scar Sophia."

So Sarah answered Sophia in Korean (which Sophia didn't understand), and Sophia quickly lost interest and resumed singing while Sarah silently mourned for the squirrel.

As for me, I did feel bad for running over the squirrel, and the more that my wife "personified" the squirrel, the more I felt worse - but I pretty much got over it two minutes after it happened. I did find it interesting how much my attitude had changed the three other times I was involved in squirrel road-kill incidents in my younger days. Yes, I remember every single one of them. There was the time my dad ran over a squirrel on Veterans Memorial Highway on the way to fishing when I was six - which distressed me and put a big dampener on that outing. There was my mom hitting the squirrel on the way to CTY in Lancaster, leading me to angrily berate my mom for not braking hard given that there were no other cars in sight. And there was the time I was driving to school as a high school junior and nailed a squirrel on that same Veterans Memorial Highway, making me depressed for the rest of that day.

Have I become jaded to believe life is unfair and life sometimes sucks, and sometimes you get hit by a car? Maybe recognizing the bigger problems in the world have made me less sensitive to the well-being of a random local rodent. Has my fondness for small fuzzy creatures dissipated now that I'm an adult homeowner who fumes at the damage that chipmunks have done to my yard? Maybe having kids have given me a new perspective on the "little ones" who are truly worthy of my protection?

For the record, I'm sorry I hit the squirrel.