Yesterday before leaving the house, I saw a cluster of squirrels running in frenzied circles in the middle of the street. It so happens that my little insignificant corner of the neighborhood tends to be a local hub for animals. Not least among the various animals that pay us visits are hyperactive squirrels, but I rarely see them congregating in the middle of the street. Why?
My eyes soon settled on the reason. He was unmoving. His paws were upturned and his legs splayed in the air, more inert than relaxed. That’s when I realized that the pack of squirrels running around the street were running around in circles around their fallen friend. They squawked or screamed or uttered whatever it is that squirrels utter when a car passed by. Most drivers carefully navigated the road and wheeled around the dead squirrel. Other more unscrupulous drivers barreled down the two lane road like an undeterred NASCAR (for some reason people like to treat the road in front of my home as though it were a racetrack).
I don’t know what killed the poor squirrel. It didn’t look flattened like the way most animals look after their first and sometimes final encounter with a moving vehicle. It just looked dead.
The entire affair appeared curious to me. What drew my attention was not the fact that something had killed a squirrel but how his compadres reacted to his death. Perhaps I’m anthropomorphizing creatures that are little more than large rodents, but there seemed genuine grief among them and perhaps even anger. The way they guarded the body; the way the kept watch on the side of the road; how one of them perched himself atop a split rail fence nearby… Their behavior seemed very unusual for what I figured to be a cute but dumb creature.
All this got me thinking about the crazy world we live in and mortality itself. That same morning my friend told me that Iran is conducting the full mobilization of their military and aiming all their SAS missiles and on oil sites in the Mideast, while Russia was simultaneously ordering NATO to stop their acts of aggression in the Caucuses (We are having wargames with Georgia at the moment.). I also thought of how Israel as publicly stated that it will not countenance a nuclear Iran and that force will be applied if necessary.
We seem to be on the cusp of the Magog War foretold in our Bible. The news outlets are conducting infantile game shows and quizzes in what is becoming more and more like a Howard Beale variety show. I would not be terribly surprised if they start bringing on the panel Madame Gisele the psychic complete with her crystal ball.
How odd that apocalpyse is creeping up on us with such banality? It seems that not many people are the wiser…
