Why Did The Squirrel Cross The Road?

Because he felt like it. Does he need a motivation? The question is: how did he cross a busy road without becoming part of it? It’s a squirrel trick.

I live at the corner of a busy street. It’s bad now, but it used to be worse before two roads met and shook hands courtesy of a bridge slightly upstream. PennDOT came through. (Q: What is orange and sleeps three? A: A PennDOT truck.) Ok, enough of this hilarity; let’s get back to our furry friends and their street walking.

I don’t know which was the first squirrel to discover this, but it might have been after the last squirrel to be pancaked on the street. Following the memorial service, one of that species looked up to heaven, beseeching the Squirrel God for eternal life and saw a telephone wire. “Huh,” he thought, “that looks like a squirrel road.”

The next day, he tried it. Traffic flowed radiator to tailpipe under him while he hopped leisurely from one side to the other like Blondin over Niagara Falls. Squirrels on either side cheered him on. No sooner had he finished than phone, tv and electric lines filled with these tail-flicking furballs.

No more did birds stand by the side of the road, napkins around their necks, knives and forks under their wings, waiting for the next unlucky road-crossing car hit. While far above them, the squirrels made their little mocking sounds, flicked their tails and tossed nuts down on the carrion-consuming birds.