PONDERATIONS . . .
(Yes, I know that's not a word.)

Squirrels
Every day for the last month or so, a whole gaggle of squirrels has been gathering on my front lawn, about 15 feet from my window. They are there morning, noon and night. They chatter and scamper and chew on something on the ground. They play with each other. They just sit there, or lie there, or stand there and look around. They hardly budge anymore when I open the door in the morning to leave for work, or when my car rolls into the driveway as I arrive home. They stare at me balefully when I clap my hands at them, or say hi, or yell at them to shoo. I can't imagine why they have suddenly started gathering on that one spot on our lawn. Has someone planted squirrel-marijuana there? Squirrel-nip? Are there particularly tasted bugs in residence? Do squirrels even eat bugs? Whatever it is, it is most mysterious. And hilarious -- the other day, I rolled into my driveway and was greeted by a particularly plump squirrel, loping his way across the pavement in front of my car, turning his head as if to nod a hello. He was so plump, his little squirrel belly scraped the ground as he loped. And he really did lope, because he was just too plump to do anything else. Weird. Should I be concerned about these squirrels? Are they going to get all jacked up one day and attack me as I walk to my car? Stranger things have happened . . .

Bugs
I recently watched a little bug with many legs take a stroll around a large carpeted room, back and forth, using the same path often, not really going anywhere. It occurred to me that had the bug possessed normal-vision eyes and a thought process comparable to humans, it would have been really freaked out. As I sat there watching the bug, I envisioned myself being that tiny, surrounded by gigantic chairs with seemingly insurmountable legs, dodging the always-unexpected humongous footfall, crawling for a perceived eternity only to come face-to-face with a wall, a desk, a planter that I would now have to find my way around, panting and sweating and laboriously overcoming each strand of the carpet and trying not to fall into the cracks between the fibers. And so I concluded that being a bug must be truly difficult. People want to kill you, spray dangerous chemicals on you, pull off your legs, smoosh you. They chase you out of any environment you step into, or, alternatively, run shrieking from your very presence. I would expect that bugs have very high blood pressure and a strong propensity for heart attacks . . . had they any blood pressure or propensity for cardiac conditions at all.

Bloody Murder
Once in a while, we get a few criminal cases in the courthouse that are just incomprehensible. They involve horrid things like billions of dollars' worth of hard drugs, sawed-off shotguns sharing bedroom space with young children, and messy bloody retaliatory murder. The perp is almost always on the young side, at an age that I should be able to relate to . . . but of course I can't. The questions I always ask as I check out the early-20-something-year-old defendant sitting in court are "How could this happen? How can people live like this? How can you live with yourself after killing another person for nothing? What kind of society have we become where your environment can create such a person?" I know the answers that have all been researched and presumed: socio-economic factors, single-parent homes, the oppressed minority, substandard housing and education, lack of motivation and/or hope, numbed feelings and consciences, blah blah blah. But hearing these answers doesn't make me feel less like crying over the reality that stupid bloody murder happens and there's nothing I can do about it.