One of my most favourite memories of my TOM girls comes from CHW the year they were on team. I was sharing a tent with them and the whole week was pure laughter. I was reminded of one time that week with them today. It went something like this (identities will remain protected):
TOM girl 1: (just back from a moonlit walk around the lake with a boy!) We’re so similar, it’s unbelievable! Seriously! Like what’s my biggest fear?
TOM girl 2: (without the slightest hesitation, clearly recollecting the thousands of miles they have spent on the roads that year) Roadkill.
TOM girl 1: (quite perturbed that after nearly a year together TOM girl 2 has missed that piece of information) NO! (but goes on undeterred) It’s that I’ll end up on my own. That’s his biggest fear too.
The point was lost on us by this point, we were all laughing so much that she thought roadkill was her biggest fear in life!
So why was I reminded of this conversation today? Because I think I killed a squirrel.
I was driving along my street going home for lunch when a little grey squirrel, startled from the obtrusive noise of the car engine disrupting his nut gathering, ran out in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes hoping I would stop in time. The squirrel looked right at me, he was paralysed with fear. I’m not sure I stopped in time but I don’t think the yelp I heard is a good sign. I’m trying to take comfort in the fact it was grey squirrel and they are overpopulated already. Imagine if it had been a red squirrel, the guilt I would feel over killing a little Squirrel Nutkin would be unbearable.
I’m maybe not scared of roadkill but I certainly don’t like it. I avert my eyes when I see any unidentified object on the road and I tell myself it’s a rag of some sort. I still remember my first victim of roadkill. I was driving to Derry and a bird swooped across infront of my car. There was no time to stop, to brake, to do anything. I just hoped he had made it across in time. As I looked in my rear view mirror, what I saw looked exactly like it would have had a cartoon bird got run over by a cartoon car - a great mass of feathers falling slowly to the ground and I knew he hadn’t made it.
I live on a one way street so tonight on the way home I will have to avert my eyes for fear that I might see the flattened body of a former squirrel. At least this time there were no feathers, I can tell myself he made it away.
[Oh and yay for Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix and Walk the Line winning Golden Globes last night! The Hollywood Foreign Press Association agree with me that it's a good film!]
2 comments:
when i was a squirrel leader i was called grey squirrel. the first day they gave me my squirrel name a wee boy came up to me and said - grey squirrels are vicious you know. so dont cry too much.
killer!!!!!
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