Back in the fall of 2007 I went for a ride one day up Mount Royal in my home of Montreal. Now Mount Royal is not a real mountain, but it is a very picturesque park designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted, and a decent size hill which you can get a good work out on if you can avoid hitting the pedestrians and joggers. I didn't hit any, so I was pretty pleased about my basic coordination and cycling skills, and thinking about how great a cyclist I was, and was having a little mind movie of me winning the 1896 Paris-Roubaix as I descended down the mountain (again, not a real mountain).

Then outa no where, a bloody little tree rat ran right in front of me and under my front wheel. I rode over him at a brisk pace of probably around 35, maybe 40 k, and he just took it. He just maintained his vector and went into the woods. I stopped, got off my bike and went into the thicket to look for him, but god knows why. It's not like I coulda performed any damage control surgery to manage his trauma, but I guess if he was in pain I coulda finished what I started and done him in as humanely as possible with my fifteen millimeter wrench (I was on the track bike that day). I was relieved to not see him. I am no great animal lover, but neither am I a cold and calculated killer.

I don't know what happened to him, but I have often thought about him from time to time. I like to think that he did not succumb to his injuries, that although in severe pain he managed to find a small cache of water and nuts, made a bed out of soft pine needles and fallen leaves. Slowly bringing himself back to health, day after day, until he was able to once again spastically run around Mount Royal with a renewed lust for life, mating vigorously and often with other squirrels (I assume it was a dude squirrel) and living his squirrel existence to its fullest potential.

Now in the past four years since that has happened, I have had no issues with squirrels whatsoever, until about two months ago. Since late September, or early October I have run over four more squirrels, with one confirmed kill. Is it me? Am I putting something dark and hate filled into the Universe, maybe actively trying to kill squirrels on some subconscious level? Or is anyone else running over them also?