deadlightsgirl | Atonement is a bitch

Saturday morning, the day of Yom Kippur (which I don't observe except by sometimes eating lobster in rebellion), I walked out into the backyard and was greeted by a dead squirrel impaled on the tines of a rake. I think it fell off the roof and landed on the upturned tines of the rake, and I, as the only grownup around, had to deal with it. Luckily Gracie decided it was sleeping, said "night night squirrel", and moved on to other things. I got a shovel and a garbage bag. I thought about calling animal control, but it was dead already. So I used a shovel and put it in a garbage bag, and now it is in the garage, waiting for me to put out the trash tonight.

May I just say that out of all the default grownup things I have had to do since becoming single, this was among the more sucky - even with the shovel, I was totally skeeved.
I am choosing to believe that the squirrel was chosen by the PTB to bear my sins on the day of atonement, since Yom Kippur is big with putting your sins into an animal and then it dying.
Apparently your sins are put into an animal, and then the animal is sacrificed (this is old school Yom Kippur). I mean, I had kind of a boring year - I didn't think I had even done a squirrel's worth of sinning, but whatever. I hope the squirrel didn't suffer too much.

PS, having nothing to do with squirrels - the episode of West Wing where the MS is intoduced is on, and aside from the fact that the writing is beautiful and it features Mayor Wilkins as the Secretary of Agriculture (in his pre-snake days), there are two moments that always stop my heart a bit - the look of heartbroken panic on Stockard Channing's face just before she tells Leo that the President has MS, and the tremor in Martin Sheen's voice when he answers Leo's question of why he hadn't told him..."because I wanted to be President". Sweet crap, these guys are good.