may 17, 2021 / 4 miles / 66 degrees
Reading through this entry from 2 years ago, I wondered if the following paragraph could be turned into a poem, or part of a poem, or the start of a poem? Maybe just the line at the end: “squirrels devote much of their life to not-dying.”
Running down on the part of the trail just past the double bridge, where the walking path dips down below the road and then up again, I encountered my nemesis: the frantic squirrel that darts across the path in front of me, forcing me to stop or stutter step to avoid it. For the first time ever, this particular dipshit ran right into my foot. No damage done, at least not to me. Why do squirrels do this? Googled it and couldn’t find a “field-tested” answer. One hypothesis: over the years they have evolved to evade predatory birds by zig-zagging; they have not yet evolved to account for the behavior of cars or running Saras. In one of the articles I consulted, they wrote: “squirrels devote much of their life to not-dying.” How much time do humans devote to it?
may 17, 2021