The squirrels are out heavy these days….and, sometimes, it’s hard to miss hitting them with the Mail Jeep.

I haven’t hit any….but it’s hard to avoid them.

Yesterday, after missing the latest hyperactive and seemingly suicidal rodent that was carrying a walnut across the road, I thought about damage and intent and….

Actually, what I thought was that I was glad that the squirrel ran out of the way.

The other ponderings came a little bit later.

I saw the squirrel….and couldn’t do anything but keep a straight path and let him respond to me.

If I had swerved, I would have killed him….probably.

I see dead things on the road all the time….snakes…squirrels….turtles.

Sometimes even a raccoon or an opossum.

Sometimes even a deer.

And….sometimes even a bear.

Sometimes…..no….that’s enough of that. You get the picture.

The weirdest thing I’ve seen, though, is someone swerving to hit an animal.

I’ve even seen people swerving to hit something that’s already dead….like they were saying, “HAH!! THAT’S RIGHT!! YOU DEAD!! DON’T MESS WITH ME AND MY CAR!!”

That’s a perverse thing….swerving to hurt.

I guess that what I started thinking was that if we….or…a person…just stays the course and doesn’t veer off too violently into other people’s lives….no matter how odd or erratic their path is…the chances of damage are pretty small.

At least we have a chance of getting out of the way if they stay on their path.

We have a journey that we’re working on completing.

We all have a path….and if it’s straight or meandering is pretty irrelevant.

It’s our path.

It’s our own.

Now, sometimes, a person seems to be so disappointed with something that they can’t help but veer off into our path.

That’s swerving to hurt.

They hurt….so….they hurt.

They hurt the people around them.

They’ll take you down if you don’t see them coming.

You and your nuts…..will be taken down by someone swerving to hurt.

How do you see that one coming?