ode to a chipmunk.

Driving home tonight from work, my car passed over a small flattened heap of fur in the middle of the road.  Probably a squirrel or a large rat. Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.My heart stopped and I felt a grabbing at my chest.It happens every time.I see what was once a creature of nature, all alive and oblivious, laying on the side of the road or in the middle of the pavement, indiscernible to the fleeting glance but somehow I ALWAYS catch it.  I see it ahead and swerve around it, not wanting to add injury to the already beaten carcass hugging the ground.  And in the rare instance I pass over it - 60 mph - fleeting - that graveyard chill passes over my body.This creature - it was once a living thing.  It was a baby, it had a mother, and maybe even had a nest or hutch or whatever you call it with some hungry children waiting for a worm or cockroach or piece of moldy Subway sandwich left unfinished by the construction workers on the 405.  It was maybe someone's pet.  It was maybe someone's family. I hope it was not someone's family.I often ask myself how I am not a devout vegan with this type of mentality.  I don't know. (For the record, I pretty much eat only chicken. Funny, as they're notorious for crossing roads.) But what I do know is the gripping I feel, the tugging at my heart when I see the animal lying crushed in the middle of the second lane.We run things over and call them roadkill. We say it's just how life is, it's just how this world is, it's just what happens.  But guess what?  It's not.  It is but it is SO not. Things get run over and we keep going and we forget.  I just can't help it. I feel like I am walking - driving - through a ghost.  Because just because we don't understand doesn't mean they don't hurt. Just because they got in our way doesn't mean there was no fear.  Why have we not been able to fix this yet? We've displaced these little guys; it's survival of the fittest - we've evolved in ways that allow us to build freeways, commission strip malls, lop off whole chunks of mountain to develop a community of condominiums. Most of theses tiny creatures are born into it. They did not know the trees, the acorns, the Disney-esque thickets. They just know the concrete and the luxuries of our world. The light posts are their trees - the moldy Subway their acorns - Sepulveda Blvd their thicket. Our asphalt world is not where they are supposed to be yet we just expect them to be there. And they don't know how to adapt.  They don't know that an airplane is not a bird and a car won't just leap over them like a rabbit. They just don't know.How blessed are we? We see this world around us and take it in. We know our surroundings, and what we don't know we have the luxury of finding out. We could get pummeled to the ground and run over and we were born in this world that offers us the inherent drive and effort to move forward, should we choose to take it.I pass over the roadkill and shudder. Depending on the moon's place in the month I might cry a little. It's a lost life and I can feel its fear. So the least I can do is show some reverence.