So today I ventured out on the wild and wonderful bike trail system of beautiful Prince George’s County. Gotta say, not so bad….except for some questionable stretches…

About 10 miles in I go around this corner and see a large tree. At the base of the tree is a squirrel, just sitting there, not doing anything. The squirrel has a look in his eye. I’ve seen this look before. It’s the one you see driving on a two lane road lined by trees, where the squirrel could pick any moment to try to make his mad dash across. Of course he’s a squirrel, so there’s not a lot of thought that goes into it. It’s pretty much, I’m tired of waiting, let’s give this a shot. It’s usually a bad choice.

So I make eye contact with this squirrel and give him the mental “Dude, I’ll be past you in five seconds, there’s no one behind me, you can safely cross then or 20 minutes after with no problems. Don’t. Go. Now.” It turns out that either myself or the squirrel lacks the ability to communicate through telepathy–I blame the squirrel–and he made a break for it. As he started to move I thought, surely I’m not going to have to slow down to avoid hitting a squirrel. Nobody runs over a squirrel on their bike. It just doesn’t happen.

It’s a good thing I slowed down. If it wasn’t for a swerve to the right thrown into the mix, I would have had dinner.

The lesson in all of this? Squirrels are out of their mind. And lack telepathy skills. And bow hunting skills.