What a sickening noise.
It was a lot louder than I thought it would be.
I saw something come out of the corner. I thought it was a big leaf.
But it had an impact. And it made a noise.

My wife, who wasn’t paying attention, looked at me, accusingly, because she thought that I ran over a pothole.
I looked through the rearview mirror to see that I had ran over a squirrel.
I saw its tail twitch. And I felt so guilty.
It was a much louder noise than I would’ve ever expected. It was my first time running over an animal with my car.
“Oh man! I ran over a squirrel!”
“A squirrel?!? Really?”
“Yea! I see it twitching! Oh man! I feel so guilty! Crap!”

Then, being the loving person that she is, my wife said,
“You’re so evil. What did that squirrel do to you?”
Of course the teasing didn’t end there.
“Don’t get Joe mad. He might run you over with a car!”
“What are you going to tell Jesus?”
“What are you going to say to St. Francis?”
“In cold blood…”
And of course, my favorite: We walked into a restaurant to get lunch (“Can you even eat after what you did?”) and she walked over to me, and says:
“Did you wash your hands?”
“Uh… not yet, why?”
“How else are you going to get the blood off of your hands?”

I later returned to where the squirrel ran under my car. And it was lying there. Eyes closed. I… didn’t want to touch it. But it was a cute looking critter. And I do feel horrible. And guilty.

When I saw the squirrel, lying there all peacefully… and dead, I immediately begin to think about the consequences of the squirrel jumping up to life, in zombie mode and coming after me. I don’t care how cute the squirrel is. A zombie squirrel is something to fear.

I should’ve at least tried to bury it.
…or eat it. People do that, right?

Anyway. Sorry that your life ended so abruptly. May you rest in peace, Squirrel.