I don’t know how the squirrel ended up huddled under the center support of a highway overpass, five lanes of highway traffic on one side, five equally perilous lanes of traffic on the other, concrete on all sides and overhead. Having gotten there, though, is it any wonder he’d want to get back to a less concrete world?

I imagine he tried to climb the concrete supports. I imagine he spent some time calculating just how far he’d have to run before finding the end of the highway. And I imagine he even made a couple of trial runs in each direction before coming back to the overpass and desperately trying to memorize traffic patterns in hopes of finding a gap.

By the time I approached, hurtling towards him at 55mph, the squirrel passed the point of desperation. He had seen the possible futures that lay before him if he stayed and if he ran. He had begun the run.

In a series of mad, tail-frizzing dashes, he crossed all five lanes of traffic and then leaped at the concrete barrier that separated him from the blighted grass…

…and leaped again, panic mounting as his claws scraped uselessly down the barrier.

I wonder if he ever realized that he could run 10 feet in either direction and find the relative freedom of inner-city grass or if he kept flinging himself against the concrete. I’ll never know for sure.