Smoking rodents

Kate and I were driving in my car over to Coates Foreign Car Service after lunch today. I was stopped at a three way intersection waiting for two other cars to maneuver through the intersection.

As I waited for the other two cars to move, Kate chirped, "Look! A squirrel!"

I looked to the left of my car and identified the squirrel about which Kate was drawing my attention [that's an awkward sentence]. As I stared at the squirrel in the road, I noticed that the little gray rodent had what appeared to be a half-smoked cigarette perched in the side of its mouth. The cigarette wasn't lit, but the squirrel was still holding it in its mouth, as if it were looking for a light.

The squirrel didn't say anything, otherwise, I would have offered a light off of my car's cigarette lighter. Instead, the squirrel hopped off the road and down into the relative safety of a dark, overgrown woods by the road.

I guess the local fauna didn't get the message from the Surgeon General on the hazards of smoking. I'm not sure how progressive it is to see the local wildlife with a cigarette, even if unlit. Perhaps, the squirrel was trying to quit.

I'm surprised the squirrels and rabbits and whatnot in the old woods past the Balfour's house didn't take up smoking. Maybe they are what set the old woods on fire back when I was a young teenager. And we always thought it was Fred Warden.