Of Mice and Men

Yesterday I blogged about squirrels repeatedly causing power outages where I live. I happily slapped a sparkly squirrel picture on top of it, titling it “Wanted. Dead or Alive.”  Then I stayed up all night to write, and make up for lost time, and forgot about it. Life was good, writing flowed, managed to make it until about 7:00 a.m. before I lost the ability to spell, and sparkly squirrels were far from my mind.

Then I ran out to grab the mail. The mailbox stands next to a power pole with a transformer on top of it. As I stood there, looking through four pounds of junk mail, I noticed tufts of grey fur scattered in the grass and then I saw him. Yep. Sparky + Transformer = Fail. Now I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that few people like rats, and I tried to tell myself that a squirrel is just a rat with better hair. It didn’t work, the poor little fry guy was so wretched and pathetic. With an entire forest to gnaw on, he unfortunately picked a power pole, what a legacy.

I felt hugely guilty. Hadn’t I just put a bounty on his head last night?  I glanced over at a neighbor’s house. Surely not, they’d never. I mean, yes, I had bounded around the other night in a frog costume in front of their game camera, but SURELY they wouldn’t have offed some sad little squirrel in retribution for that. Never. Though I admit I did look over there repeatedly, such is the conscience of a prankster.  Oh yes, live by the sword…  chew on live wires...  poke the bunny…  And when the time comes, pay the ferryman with sparkly coins, just like my little friend Sparky. No regrets.