I write today of the passing of a noble squirrel, a hither-to uncounted highway fatality on this Holiday Weekend. And whats more, I didn’t even know its name. I mean, if a being dies on Memorial Day, or any other Federal Holiday, shouldn’t we mourn its passing… or even know its name?
Wasn’t the alien who died in the operating room in Independence Day called “Melff-fllipolackicsplaff”? I mean, that could have just been the sound of its brains oozing out, but that doesn’t bring this squirrel back to life now, does it? And if you really think about it, how many highway-squirrels do you think there left alive here in America anyway? Well, this is just one of their stories.
We were driving down the Garden State Parkway southbound to visit friends and were exiting to get on Rt 280. The exit is in an urban area of NJ, with very little grass, located between the cities of Newark & Irvington, leading to a one-lane bridge high and over-looking the highway. My wife was driving and I was doing my best to deal with that terror, when she suddenly slowed down. I looked up, and running for his life in front of her SUV was a squirrel, on the exit ramp. And trying to get away from my wife, it turned onto the bridge. My wife had slowed down to 25, so we didn’t pass over him…but instead kept him running at 25 MPH, right in front of her, across that bridge. He kept trying to duck to the right or the left, but there was just no place for him to go. Imagine Dustin Hoffman with a fluffy gray tail. Or, for sheer size & scale, imagine you were being chased by an M1 Abrams tank across a bridge at 25MPH. His little heart had to be beating faster than a Keith Moon solo.
And in a gray flash, he was gone.
“Did I hit it?” my wife called out.
“No, Dear." I replied. "He jumped.”
Now our story may end there, but the squirrel’s story continued. For 3 seconds at least, as he leapt off the bridge and fell the 50 or so terrifying feet into the oncoming north-bound GSP traffic. I can almost hear him scream:
“SkrrrreeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” *
[spoiler] (thoughtfully translated for those of you who don’t speak squirrel)
[highway-squirrel] “Crazy…pant…Bitch…pant…SUV…pant…RUUUUNN!!!” [/highway-squirrel] [/spoiler]
And for the squirrel, the story may have ended there. But for the driver in the northbound lanes of the GSP who suddenly had a spreadeagled squirrel impact into his/her windshield at 65, the story goes on. For what comes after “skreeeeeeeee!!!” on the GSP?
A cracked windshield?
Calls of “Git it off!!! Git it off!!! Git it off!!!"?
Wild steering wheel swerves and possibly a windshield wiper fwip?
Possibly a car accident?
Its hard to say…just like its hard to say whether that squirrel survived the initial fall and was mercifully unconscious at the windshield-wiper fwip, or whether that squirt in the eye of washer fluid was just enough to wake it up in time to see the grill of an oncoming van. :eek:
Grilling Squirrel on Memorial Day: the Shame of it.
So, if you work in the insurance industry, don’t be surprised if you get a call Tuesday morning.
“You’re car got attacked by a …a What…?!”