This weekend I was helping the Trube get her bike into the basement when we found a squirrel laying in the grass, panting but otherwise motionless. Our cat was poised above it with, I swear, a smirk on his face. There were two largish puncture marks in the squirrel's sides and it clearly couldn't move, I'm assuming it's spine had been snapped. Of course my girl is all sympathy and wants to help but doesn't know how. I'm equally clueless. Worried what she'll think I toss out the possible, though wildly unlikely, scenario that a dog got it, using the size of the holes to add weight to my conjecture. "No, Ringo couldn't make holes that big. His mouth is too small."
"Well, what dog was in our yard, Mom?"
"You know, I bet a dog got it in the woods, and it managed to get away and crawled into our yard." She's skeptical, but let's it pass in favor of the more pressing question, what are we going to do? I go to the basement and get the shovel, but there is just no way I can pull it off. Instead, I cravenly scoop it's totally limp body onto the shovel and tell my sweet kid that we're going to put him in the woods so his family can see him. She's all for it!
I'm sure he isn't suffering, he can't be able to feel anything, and I simply don't have it in me to try and brain him in front of my daughter while he's laying there with his little black eyes staring at me and his sides heaving in and out. It was horrible.
When we went to pick up Gordon for dinner and told him about it, he asked if we'd smacked him in the head and True threw her hands to her mouth in horror and gasped, "NO! Why?!" I explained it to her, but can only imagine if she'd actually seen me try and do it. As it happens, I'm a coward and my kid thinks the squirrel visited with his family before closing his eyes and drifting off to squirrel heaven.
