The highlight of our walks to the car from school this past winter and spring was invariably the part where Scotty and Grace located "the dead squirrel." At the foot of one of the trees lining the sidewalk on Main Street was a perfectly preserved frozen squirrel. Scotty ran past the trees as quickly as he could, punctuating the gaps with staccato "not that one, not that one, not that one," until he had arrived at the money tree, for lack of a better term -- and because a better term cannot possibly exist.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, there's the dead squirrel."

All was well in the universe, and we could then think about unimportant things like obtaining sustainence.

I found myself walking past the trees on my day to class Tuesday saying "not that one, not that one," and I realized that squirrel has disappeared. I thought it would never happen. He had become a fixture in my life, and I felt a little pang of loss -- kind of like when I realized that by growing up to be neither Mrs. Chico DeBarge nor Mrs. Sebastian Bach, I'd dodged a future of rockless henessey ads and shameless use of self-tanners. With all of the justified pangs of loss I've been feeling lately, you wouldn't think a squirrel would do it for me.

The sidewalk, incidentally, runs along the cemetary directly across from my school. Every day, we would drive past it 4 or 5 times looking for a spot to park, and every day Grace would say "Mommy, what are those dead places called again?" Perhaps some inspired 5-year-old made off to the dead place and gave our poor friend a proper burial. What? You think that's highly unlikely? I don't care. It's what happened. Shut it off. I hate you.