a lot of running around, and when it came time for me to take my break; I decided to take a walk. A squirrel running around a tree lifted my spirits. It was ironic, running around had depressed me and now this squirrel doing the same thing cheered me up.

The experience was so uplifting that when I returned to work, I mentioned it to Paul. He seemed very interested and I told him exactly where I had observed the little guy at play.

 I was horrified when I later learned Paul had shot and killed the squirrel.

Being a city boy, I had learned to know a squirrel only by his physical appearance. It had never occurred to me that squirrels are also identified by specific behaviors; that variation from that behavior signals a disorder. So that what seemed to me to be a squirrel having fun was seen by Paul as perhaps the outbreak of rabies he had been told to be watch out for. The squirrel was packed in ice until the man from the upstate lab came to pick it up.

The only moose I ever saw was walking around a shopping center parking lot beating up on Volkswagon Beatles. I assumed that this magnificent creature had gotten lost. Wrong again; for the man who told the police where to aim the tranquilizer darts, just hung his head and said, "Damn Meningeal Worms."