Lying in the gutter in the street. As I drive by my son’s school. A red furry corpse. Lying on its side. Nested in a bed of brown, gold, and orange leaves that have just fallen from the trees.

A vision of autumn and of decay.

Sorry, I’m going for a certain level of poetry and profundity. I’m no John Keats with his “Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness/ Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.”

Meanwhile, that sun is maturing into what Emily Dickinson called “that certain slant of light/On winter afternoons/That oppresses, like the weight/Of cathedral tunes”

And I continue wonder, what’s going on with those dead squirrels?

I wrote in an earlier blog, half in jest, that I wondered if the death of these squirrels in my neighborhood is a sign of the apocalypse. The proverbial canaries in the coal mine. Or, whether the poor, bushy-tailed rodents are victims of West Nile Virus, or of some other scourge?

If anyone has any ideas, let me know.