do squirrels grieve?
Even though my ride to work is only three miles, I notice so much more on my bike. I hear the birds chirping, smell the trees (and the pollen) in the air, and feel the wind against my skin. I frequently see squirrels on the sidewalk, and they usually run away from a bike as fast as they run away from cars. Yesterday, however, the squirrel I was about to come across on the side walk sort of tip-toed away. I looked down as I got closer, and noticed he was staring at a dead squirrel right there on the side walk. It was funny to me at first. I was envisioning a full scale squirrel funeral, with the animal in a little casket in the front of a church and lots of squirrel families walking by and comforting the survivors. Then I thought, squirrels don't grieve, do they? The live squirrel could've witnessed the dead squirrel's death and been confused, but how could that be? He couldn't have been hit by a car and gotten flown to the sidewalk; he didn't look mangled enough for that. Did he come plummeting to the grown from the nearby tree? Did he have a squirrel heart attack or aneurysm? Did the live squirrel just happen to come across the dead squirrel, and was he standing there trying to figure out how he could prevent meeting his own demise? These were the thoughts that ran through my head all day while I was at work. It was an odd thing to witness anyway.
(x-posted to myspace)
(x-posted to myspace)