The Dead Squirrel
The squirrel looked frozen in place, flat on its back atop the bitter ground. Its rear legs splayed, its front paws raised as if in surprise, and all four sets of claws pointed to the sky. Its elongated front teeth protruded from the lips, and its fully open eyes suggested it saw how it died.
The crime scene was a small patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street, at the foot of a tree still barren after a winter of alternating warm and cold patterns. The squirrel hadn’t been hit by a car or ravaged by another animal, and it looked too plump and healthy to suggest disease or hunger. My best guess? It fell out of the tree that now darkened its body and died on impact.
I might not have even noticed the squirrel if my dog wasn’t with me. In the year and change since we adopted her, she has trained me to always scan the sidewalk in a way I rarely did before. Looking down instead of straight ahead, watching out for anything she shouldn’t step on or might consider eating. Sometimes those are the same thing.
My dog and I walk that stretch of sidewalk nearly every day. More accurately, nearly every day when the weather cooperates, considering how much she hates rain or heavy snow. The two of us spotted the dead squirrel about the same time. It couldn’t have been there more than a day.
Some clichés reflect reality, and my dog’s fascination with squirrels fits such a trope. If she sees one running or eating on the ground, her entire focus shifts. She’ll freeze and then either stalk slowly toward it or bolt in its direction. When she sees a squirrel in a tree, she’ll watch it with eyes wide, tracking it as it moves from branch to branch. Sometimes she’ll move her mouth as if talking to the squirrels; other times she just stares as they chirp at her or shake their tails in her direction.
I don’t know what she’d do if she ever reached a squirrel, whether she’d treat it as a playmate or as a plaything. She runs up to small dogs in a similar way, but then just sniffs them, wags her short tail, and bounces around to get them to have fun with her. On the other hand, she plays with her plush squirrel toy by shaking it and running around squeaking it with her mouth. Just in case, I never let her get too close to the real thing.
She didn’t have any of those reactions when she saw the dead squirrel. Instead, she stared at it for several seconds before turning to me. There’s a look she gives me, focusing her eyes in a specific way and arching the ridges above them, that means she’s asking for help. It’s the same look she uses when a ball rolls too far behind a cabinet for her to reach, when she gets her leg caught on her leash, or when enough rain has pooled that she can’t walk through it without getting soaked.
Her mix of herding breeds suggests she has roughly the intelligence of a three-year-old human, and my experience with children that age suggests she’d rank on the high end of that cohort. She’s a confident puppy in most circumstances, so few things make her seem as childlike as that helpless look does, the way it conveys her concern about something she can’t fix and her conviction that I’m the one who can solve such problems.
She stares at me for another beat, waiting for my usual response: “Do you need help?” I don’t say it this time because of course I can’t do anything for the squirrel. She looks at its body again, then back at me, trying to make sure I understand what it is that she wants me to fix. She repeats that pattern a few times, stopping only when I put my hand on her side and hold her against my pant leg, gently reassuring her and telling her things are okay.
Eventually I’m able to convince her to turn the corner and continue walking, but she looks back a few times, checking. When we reach the end of the block, she sits and refuses to walk until I offer to carry her and she climbs into my arms. I walk the last three blocks home with her forty-plus pounds cradled against my chest, stroking her back to let her know I will always help her when I can.
We take alternate routes on walks for a few days, and the squirrel is gone the next time we pass that tree on the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street. My dog remembers the squirrel and reacts to its absence. She pauses at the same spot and gives me the look again. I don’t know what she thinks has happened. It’s only when she hears another squirrel tittering in the branches above and watches it scamper about that she chooses to move along without my urging. Maybe she is distracted by this new animal; maybe she thinks it’s the same squirrel and I’ve somehow repaired it. All I know is she’s satisfied. Her steps quicken and her ears flap with happiness, her concern palpably released. For today at least, squirrels play in the January sun, and her world makes sense again.
Jeff Fleischer is the author of Animal Husbandry (and Other Fictions), Votes of Confidence: A Young Person’s Guide to American Elections, Civic Minded: What Everyone Should Know About the US Government, and A Hot Mess: How the Climate Crisis is Changing Our World.