Lawrence.com

Back in my younger days, when my legs were bigger and lungs better — or is that, when my legs were better and my lungs bigger? — I used to try to find the biggest hills in town up which to ride my bike.

I’d go miles out of my way to seek the tallest, longest, steepest ups the city had to offer.

From behind the wheel of a car, it’s difficult to appreciate just how vertical some of our city streets really are. When the horsepower is self-generated, it’s easy to realize — and, of course, exaggerate — just how hilly it is around here.

Before and/or after work or just tooling about town, I tackled all the obvious candidates. In the interest of fairness, I went up all the ups on the same bike — my fixed-gear. Some bikes are geared so low you really can climb up a wall. But on a fixie, there’s no hiding from elevation gain.

Several access roads to the Kansas University campus, especially the numbered roads on the east side, are among the obviously notable inclines.

I used to like to test my legs on two pretty good challenges on Ninth Street — westbound, over the few blocks before Iowa, and again farther west on the short-but-oh-so-steep rise between Lawrence Ave. and Crawford Drive — but in the interest of self-preservation, I pretty much skip that route these days. Cresting the Ninth Street hill at Iowa gets a little dicey on the drunk-clogged streets at 2 a.m.

My regular commute offers a choice between two other, drastically different, climbs: the not-so-steep-but-long-slog that is the climb up Lawrence Ave. from Princeton to Trail, and the abrupt rise into Fall Creek Farms west of Kasold, up Tomahawk Drive.

And while none of those molehills compares to, say, the Mount Washington Auto Road — 4,500 feet of ascent over 7.5 miles — or Mauna Kea (13,790 feet of rise over 41.6 miles) … well, they’re the best we’ve got. (And it’s probably appropriate to say here that my ability to climb like a sprinter is a perfect match to my ability to sprint like a climber, which is to say I’m all-around slow under any condition.)

Over the weekend, I stumbled over a new favorite bump.

I don’t know how many times I’ve rolled near it, but I wasn’t exactly sure where it ended up; I figured I’d Google-map it someday to make sure it was, in fact, a through street, but I never did.

Sunday, though, I decided just to ride on up Fifth Street, west of Colorado and South California (behind Carquest and Jayhawk Pawn and Jewelry on Sixth). It’s a quiet little road that seems to end abruptly in the trees at the top of a deceptively steep hill.

From the bottom, it doesn’t look like much, so I approached it casually — just spinnin’ along.

After a few dozen yards, the incline grew. I stood on the pedals. No worries.

It turned up. I bore down.

Still yards from the top, I realized my mistake: The darned thing just gets steeper as it goes along. It’s not a steady hypotenuse; it’s half of a “U” — gradual at the start, closing in on straight up (not really!) at the top.

I approached the peak and saw a woman walking her dog. She smiled and said hello. I tried to return the greeting as nonchalantly as possible as I pumped my bike left and right, bearing down on the pedals.

I swear that grin was the smirk of an insider, her way of saying, “You’re not from around here, are you? Welcome to life on the side of the mountain.”

Eventually — everything was in slow motion — I crested, but not before making my bailout plan. Since I wear clipless pedals that attach my shoes to my cranks, I kept telling myself to make certain I unclipped if my momentum hit zero. If I couldn’t get out of the pedals, I was sure to flip over on my back before log-rolling tail-end-over-teakettle back down.

Maybe it was the effects of the cold/flu/crud that kept me off the bike all of last week that made it seem to steep, but the view from on high convinced me there was some serious steepness to the road behind me. A similarly vertiginous downhill sealed it.

So for now, at least, I consider that stretch to be the steepest incline in city limits, at least that I’ve tackled.

If anybody knows of a steeper stretch, I’d love to see it, so please drop me a line at ahartsock@ljworld.com or leave a comment down below.

I’m all the time finding cool stuff during my bike rides through the city.

I never find anything in my car, or anybody else’s, for that matter.

But on a bike, I roll over jewelry, cell phones, tools, pets, money, lost loves … you name it, I find it, and more often than not — pack rat that I am — I’ll bring it home. Well, not the pets. They’re so awfully difficult to carry on a bike.

My theory is simple: If I can carry it, I’ll lug it home and assess it then. Frequently my finds are worthless junk. Sometimes they’re trinkets that would have been worth keeping if only they hadn’t just been run over by a speeding 18-wheeler.

But for every hunk o’ junk I’ve lugged home, I’ve left a couple more roadside, usually in hopes of later retrieval.

Usually it’s matter of delayed recognition.

“Say, wasn’t that sparkle a block or two back coming from a 2-carat bridal set?”

“Why, yes, I do believe it was.”

“Perhaps I should pick that up next time through.”

Frequently, there’s a bit of self-preservation in mind. Generally it’s frowned upon to grab a fistful of brake on a busy thoroughfare, triggering a 10-car pileup, just to pick up a misplaced quarter.

So I’ll make a mental note and hope the astray goody is still there when I return on an off-peak hour.

Curiously, I develop a strangely strong attachment to the left-behind find. I’ll start thinking of it as MY socket set, MY beloved drill bit, MY coveted bungee cord, hoping that — unless it’s the object’s rightful owner reuniting — no other eagle-eyed scrounger comes along to pluck my precious.

I’ve seen cell phones remain untouched on heavily traveled roads for days, while pocket change disappears within minutes from quiet little side roads.

Just the other day, I was headed somewhere and saw a discarded pair of earrings resting in the gutter, still attached to the retail package.

I pedaled on, and as the hours passed before my return, the jewelry’s worth grew enormously … in my mind.

I had seen but a fleeting glimpse, but I thought they were a pair of beautiful, fresh-water pearls. Of course, such valuable baubles would be anchored by 14K posts. What if, I wondered, there were more bejeweled goodies, a regular treasure trove of mislaid booty, languishing in the same gutter?

I was relieved to see, upon my return, that nobody had purloined my wayward prize. I waited for a break in traffic, rolled to a quick stop and palmed the goods for the short ride home.

As soon as I rolled to a stop, I spied my hard-earned reward — a pair of cheap, semi-metallic earrings that had been squashed by traffic. The orbs were misshapen, the posts bent to right angles.

No matter.

I left ’em at my wife’s place at the dinner table and proudly described them as her Valentine’s bounty, a couple of weeks early.

She was not impressed, but I’m not worried. I think I know where I can pick up a drill bit and maybe even and couple of sockets instead.

My dad has a strange fondness for shoes.

I don’t mean that in a bad way. He’s not, to my knowledge, a podophile or foot fetishist.

He just likes shoes. A lot.

Or, more accurately, he likes buying shoes.

As far back as I can remember, the man was dropping coin on footwear like Imelda Marcos on a bender.

Don’t misunderstand: It’s not a fashion thing. My dad’s so not about fashion. Just one look at his beloved DayGlo attire proves that. The man could go to a luau, and the natives would ask him to turn down his shirt. There’s bright, and there’s self-illuminated, and he leans toward the latter.

In his case, his fondness of footwear is simply practical.

He explained years ago that he’s always had trouble finding shoes to fit. He wears a 13 — a 12 1/2 in some brands, 13 1/2 in others — and back in the dark ages when we actually shopped in, well, shops (you know, the things quaintly referred to as “brick and mortar” today), stores rarely carried anything larger than a 12. He’d have to cram his planks into too-small shoes. So whenever dad (often literally) tripped over a pair of 13s, regardless of the style — sneaker, wing-tip, brogue, boot, flip-flop or even a pair of those gosh-awful tuckus-trimming rocker shoes — well, dad found himself physically unable to pilot his big-ol’ gunboats past without walking away with another pair.

Now, of course, dad can fire up the Interwebs and mouse his way to a pair of size-13s without breaking a sweat.

But old habits die hard.

I have relatively tiny tootsies — 9, 9 1/2 — so I’m never on the prowl.

I was reminded of dad's footwear fondness several weeks ago, before the expected onset of cold weather, which, of course, hasn’t set upon us yet. I stumbled upon a pair of bike gloves online and, despite my trepidation, decided to plunk down a couple of bucks to add them to my pile.

I don’t like buying bike stuff online. I prefer to patronize my local bike shops. And in the case of gloves, I like actually to slip my mitts in said mitts before pulling the trigger.

But the price was right, and I was weak, and the kicker — a tag that described it as the “best glove in the world” — sealed the deal. How could I go wrong with the best glove in the world?

Mind you, I didn’t really need another pair of gloves. I mentally took stock: I have a light pair for cool rides, two pair of liner gloves, a “cold-weather” glove, a “really cold-weather” glove, a waterproof pair, a windproof pair, a leather pair, two or three fingerless pair, a day-glo pair (take that, dad!). I can layer, bringing my total possible combinations to something like 2,457,200. In other words, I already had plenty of gloves.

But just like dear-old dad and his footwear, I couldn’t resist another pair.

I’ve only worn them around the house. It figures the winter I’m actually looking forward to a bit of cold weather, we have record highs, and the “best gloves in the world” sit there, proverbially giving me the finger.

Oh, well. I’m certain I’ll get to try them out soon enough, but not, I’m sure, before dad buys another pair of shoes or two.

I found myself in an unusual predicament the other day.

I rolled up behind a car stopped at a light, and, glancing down, I noticed a pair of scissors sitting on the car’s bumper.

“Bummer,” I thought. “Dude’s about to lose his scissors.”

But then my paranoid-parent brain kicked into hyperdrive.

I blame it on my mom.

I wouldn’t say she’s overprotective, but I distinctly recall a time she called to warn me she had read about people who had pricked their fingers on syringes. It seems shooters-up were throwing ’em away in public bathrooms. Unsuspecting toileteers would do their duty, wash and dry their hands, then dispose of the paper towels in brimming bins. The clean-and-dry-handed ones would mash the refuse down in the bins and —Yowk! — get pricked. I never heard how many thousands of folks were so afflicted, but I’m presuming each and every one — and, no doubt, a few of their close relatives — promptly shriveled up and died horrible, awful, painful deaths.

So my mom called to caution me about overflowing bathroom bins.

I believe I was in my mid-30s.

But I get it.

I have kids, so I can easily imagine the most terrible, horrendous badness spinning off the most pedestrian situations.

Which brings us to the scissors.

I immediately envisioned them becoming dislodged, clattering to the pavement, then being kicked up by another car’s spinning tires and flung into the air, where they’d tumble silently but ominously, handle-over-business end … before burying themselves thumb-hole-deep right into some poor sap’s eye socket.

At the very least, I figured they’d make it to the turnpike, then clatter to the blacktop at mile marker 180, where they’d slice through 17 of a speeding 18-wheeler’s 18 or so wheels, causing the Peterbilt of Death to careen over the center line … and, ultimately, causing a 34-car pileup and heaps of dead and dying good people.

(It’s worth noting these were fine-looking scissors; not the cheap-o flimsy blades, the only kind I can find around the house when I have some scissoring to do. You know, the lousy scissors with the bendy blades, with which you chomp-chomp-chomp at even the flimsiest of mutatables before finally giving up and attacking with a steak knife. No, these were the industrial, triangular-bladed beauties I only seem to find at 3 in the morning when I roll over in bed and awaken with a start, surprised to find my spleen has been lacerated and, despite the early hour, seem to recall that, yes, my son DID just happen to have been working on some craft here earlier in the day, and, by gosh, he sure does have a hard time picking up after himself, doesn't he? The scamp!)

Oh, wait. Where was I …

Oh yes, the intersection. With the scissors.

I reached down, planning to reunite the shears with their sure-to-be-grateful owner, but as I had spent the previous milliseconds envisioning the mass destruction they were sure to wreak, the light was about to change, and the car was edging forward. (I also noticed the driver, who had been eying me warily in the rearview mirror, was looking RIGHT AT ME as I lunged forward. Perhaps I moved a bit too suddenly. Or spastically.)

By that point, the scissors were all but out of reach.

It’s probably for the best. I’m sure, given the timing, if I’d managed to save the blades before the car drove off, I would have had to resort to trying to play catch-up to return them. Surely the sight of a guy pedalling maniacally, waving industrial-strength scissors and bellowing for the car ahead to stop is grounds for arrest.

So I watched as car and slicers pulled away.

I sure hope nobody got killed.

The darnedest thing happened on the way to work the other day.

It was late afternoon. The sky was overcast, the light slowly fading.

I approached a T intersection not far from my home and rolled to a stop. I had a stop sign; cross traffic did not, and this particular intersection was near the top of a hill, making visibility slightly tricky.

As I usually do, I looked left, right, left again. Left, right, left, right, right again, left … you get the idea. Self preservation is strong is this one.

Seeing no immediate threats to my person (and, yes, I do have my own person), I pulled into the intersection and began to turn left, my head on a swivel.

I glanced again to my right and … what’s that? A car? Nah, there’s nothing there. I continued, glanced again … and, sure enough, getting awfully large in my field of view was a — wait for it — camouflage Jeep.

There was no real threat of collision, but it was a closer call than I would have liked.

All the rest of the ride in, I couldn’t help but relish the delicious irony of having a close call with a vehicle meant for stealth.

I’d guess in 99.24 percent of all car-bike collisions, the hitter said of the hittee, “Gee, officer, I never saw him/her!”

As a devotee of the see-and-be-seen school of bike commuting, I stockpile sparkly bits — reflectors, lights, high-vis (yet still stylish!) garb, garish lipstick and other “Oh, pretty!” parts — that might make me stand out from, and not become a part of, the background pavement.

So to get creamed by a vehicle painted in a way that it blends into the background would be the ultimate in ridiculousness. Or ridiculousity.

I understand the driver well could have been on his way to safari and didn’t want to spook the big game, so I’m not about to question his choice. Manufacturers go to great lengths to make their vehicles visible — like daytime-running lights, third brake lights, side-mirror blinkers, etc. — so it’s refreshing to see (or not) a ride designed to disappear (into the bush, at least, if not the suburban jungle).

It did remind me of a running joke I had with my mom when I was younger.

Whenever we’d see someone or something cloaked in camo, we’d joke that it was a good thing he/she/it was moving or else it’d be invisible.

The joke, I’ve learned, hasn’t translated well to current generations.

It’s hard to say who was less amused, my wife and kids or the store employees when we’d go to, say, the Gap when camo made a (thankfully) brief foray into fashion and I’d deliberately run into displays of shirts or shorts or pants.

“You really should put up a sign,” I’d say. “I didn’t even see this display of stylishly camo garb.”

Employees would scramble to clean up my mess; my wife would act like we’d never met (but I’m used to that by now).

I tried again the other day at our local employee-owned grocery store when we encountered two fellows apparently straight from the bush (though thankfully unarmed).

I leaned over to my daughter and whispered, “You see those two guys over there?”

She looked: “Yes.”

“I don’t,” I replied.

She was not amused.

Ah, there’s no shortage of camo humor.

Unless, of course, it’s cloaking a 2,000-pound cage bearing down on you.

I swear, officer, I never saw it coming.

I’ve been waging a war lately with my teenage daughter.

Lovely girl that she is, she tends to overuse the word “amazing.”

She’ll insist she had an amazing hamburger for lunch, which she washed down with an amazing milk. After an amazing time at chorale practice, she’ll log on to the amazing Internet and listen to the latest amazing number from amazing Adele.

I try to convince her that words are precious and that she should save such superlatives for actual superlatives, but she’s amazed I’d even question her word choice. Ah, teenagers.

I guess there are worse words she could be bandying about.

That said, I had a rather amazing experience the other morning.

Riding home after another less-than-amazing night on the sports desk, I was spinning up the one semi-significant hill on my usual commute home, lost in my thoughts and the silence of the early morning. I glanced up at the moon — just a day past full — and was stunned to see it encircled by a halo of light.

The halo was thin, but it sported at least a partial — and faint — Roy G. Biv spectrum of G through V, pale green through barely discernible violet. The halo bisected my favorite constellation (doesn’t everyone have one?), Orion, to the east. Just outside the halo to the west, Jupiter blazed away.

It was, in a word, amazing.

Wanting to share the scene with my kids despite the ungodly hour (at least it was a nonschool night), I picked up the pedalling pace. I’ve seen other celestial wonders from the saddle before, but some can be fleeting. I saw the aurora borealis on one ride home, but the gorgeous curtains of light were too faint to see by the time I made it home.

So I pedalled and craned my neck, pedalled and craned, all the while thinking I finally was witnessing my first moonbow.

It’s worth noting here that my son has a thing for moonbows, ever since I describe the phenomenon to him. I think his first three words, in order, were “mama,” “dada,” and “moonbow.” He desperately wants to see a moonbow, despite their rarity. A couple of months ago, we went outside during a full moon and sprayed water from the hose in an attempt to make a synthetic moonbow at his insistence. Reviews of the man-made moonbow were mixed.

As I pedalled home, all I could think was the joy he’d feel when he finally witnessed his beloved first moonbow.

I made it home, rushed inside, quietly crept upstairs and roused the kids, all the while trying (not so successfully) to keep from disturbing the wife.

I led the kids on the back deck and pointed up. Knuckling their eyes, both let out little gasps (maybe it was the cool night air), and drank in the sight. They admired it for a few minutes, then shuffled back off to bed.

Afterward, I learned it was not, in fact, a moonbow but a more-common 22-degree halo.

Whatever the name, it was nonetheless amazing.

And I’m certain I never would have seen it from behind the wheel of my car.

Whether it’s my inner (OK, mostly outer) child, my inside-and-out hobgoblin or simply my insatiable sweet tooth, I love Halloween.

But I have to admit, riding my bike on All Hallow’s Eve is a bit of a mixed bag.

I’m certain the drunk-to-sober-driver ratio around 2 a.m. is higher on Halloween than just about any other night of the year, except maybe Arbor Day. And there seems to be something about hiding behind a mask that brings out the nasty in lots of folks.

But I love weaving through the cute kids downtown in the early evening and the cute college kids after the witching hour has past. (As an aside, if Oct. 31 is Halloween, aka All Hallow’s Eve, does that make my early-morning commute, technically on Nov. 1, All Hallow’s Morn? Or Halloworn? And what the Hall’s a Hallow?)

Once I had a group of kids throw candy toward me as they sing-songed “Trick or treat, biker dude.” Perhaps I should say they threw candy AT me, for the most part, though I was able to snag a bit for a quick energy boost on the rest of the ride home.

Every year about this time, I ponder my options for on-bike costumes.

I won’t wear a costume at work, nor will I be That Guy who dresses up to A) take his kids trick-or-treating (as if I could catch up to the one who sprints door-to-door, or could dare to dream to be seen with the other, who wants to be in my vicinity in public about as much as a leper) or, worse, B) sit around the house and hand out goodies.

But I do fantasize about dressing up for the ride to and from work, because, really, I think fantasy is the key to a healthy work life.

Lately, I’ve considered a knight in shining armor or, perhaps, Don Quixote. Some fake platemail and a lance protruding from the handlebars should get me a bit of breathing room on the road.

I’ve considered borrowing a cruiser and dressing up as Pee-Wee Herman in his eponymous “Big Adventure,” though I’d steer clear of any movie theaters along the way.

Or maybe slap on some chaps — of course I have several pair just lying around — and a football helmet and go as an “Easy Rider.”

Better still, perhaps I’ll don a red hoodie, lash a milk crate to the ’bars, slap a stuffed animal in it, cover it with a blanket and — presto! — Elliott, from “E.T.”

Then again, if I could swing it, I think nothing would beat borrowing a gorilla suit and wearing that for my commute. I can’t imagine the looks I’d get pulling alongside some drunken car-bound partygoer in the wee hours of Halloworn.

This is a blog about rubber.

You’ll notice there’s no “s” on the end, though I thought it ironic or at least coincidental that the night I sat down to wax eloquent on the topic of rubber I rode to work and rolled over an empty industrial-sized box of condoms. It was in the middle of the street immediately in front of one of the few downtown bars, prompting me to wonder just what, uh, went down inside that would make someone think it prudent to premeditatedly pack prophylactics in such prodigious proportions. (I also wondered why I was thinking so awesomely alliteratively, but that’s another blog.)

I really must get out more.

Anyway … the other day, I was going through some old magazines. I have a tendency to horde them, then just as they pose the most significant fire threat, recycle them in great numbers. As I thumb through my mags, I like to fold over corners of pages that contain things I want to investigate further later on. I was going through the old ones, longingly checking the folded corners for gems I might have overlooked. Most of the magazines were bike-related, and an alarming number of the folded corners were to designate my interest in, of all things, bike tires.

I never really figured myself for a rubber fetishist, but the proof was there.

I thought back to one day a couple of weeks ago when I read every word of a six-page spread of reviews on tires for commuter bikes.

OK, I’m a gear junkie. I like bikes. But commuting is about the dullest form of cycling possible, and tires are about the least interesting part of any bike. Yet I read every word of a six-page spread dedicated to bike-commute rubber. Every word! Couldn’t put it down!

Flipping through one of the soon-to-be-recycled magazines, I happened upon an ad for a new line of Continental bike tires. My eyes were drawn to one in particular, a hot little number with a slick center and pronounced knobbies down the side. And it had puncture protection! I couldn’t help but think, “Man, that’s one sexy tire.”

I think I might need professional help.

Or at least a new set of tires.

I read an interesting article the other day.

A three-year British study found that more people would commute by bike if only it didn’t lead to the dreaded helmet hair. They also cited fear of reporting for duty dripping in sweat and the considerably less specific fear of being considered “weird” or a “bit odd” by co-workers.

But helmet hair, it seems, is the biggest deterrent.

“The helmet is a problem for me, because I just think it would make my hair a little squashed,” said one survey respondent, Lara.

Not to bag on the Brits, but … bloody hell!

These folks are missing the point. Helmet hair isn’t a problem. It’s an opportunity.

First, a disclaimer. I’m not big on what most people call “hair styles.” I haven’t used a blow dryer on my hair since, well, I first sprouted. I don’t use “product,” whatever that is, though I tend to overuse “quotes.” I don’t consider myself an unhygienic slob (and who does, really?). I prefer casually unkempt.

My usual daily grooming routine involves showering just before slapping on my helmet and heading out the door. The still-wet hair gets sucked out the vents in my brainbucket and — voila — stunning helmet hair. I consider it a badge of honor.

In fact, I’m on the lookout for a helmet with a vent down the middle so I can show up at work sporting a wicked fauxhawk. Or interspersed holes so I can pretend to be Pinhead. Gimme a couple of different helmets with different vent patterns, and I can have a ’do a day.

Heck, I figure folks pay lots of money for perms (they still do perms, don’t they?) to get the kind of wave I get just by riding to work a little wet behind the ears.

Embrace the wave, I say. If that makes me a weird or a bit odd, yeah, I can live with that.

helmet hair by ahartsock

I’m going to go ahead and call it: It’s going to be a long, cold winter.

I’m not basing this brash prediction on my intensive study of NexRad Radar or my knowledge of El Niño or La Niña or even my slavish devotion to The Weather Channel. No, I’m calling for a brutal winter because … the squirrels told me so.

OK, they didn’t really tell me. I’ll admit I talk from time to time to the furry tree rats, but they never actually talk back. Well, there was that one time, but I was in college and, um, experimenting, and it wasn’t so much a squirrel that talked to me as my roommate who just so happened to look like a giant squirrel at the time … but I digress.

The squirrels have spoken not through their plaintive barks and cries but through their actions. The furry beasties are thick this fall and as busy as their aquatic, tree-munching cousins.

I can’t swing a dead acorn without nearly hitting a squirrel these days. I know it’s prime time to stock up for winter, but, man, there are rodents everywhere.

They run across the road in front of me. They run BETWEEN my tires. They run alongside me, their little squirrelly claws scraping the blacktop.

And here’s the thing: Nail one in a car, and it makes a satisfying thud; nail one with a skinny bike tire, and YOU make a satisfying thud (and like the commercial a few years ago, I’m sure the rest of the squirrel clan chatters and high-fives in celebration as you scrape yourself off the pavement).

It dawned on me, though, that I’m basing my weather prediction on what has to be one of the stupidest creatures on the planet.

The other day, I was riding along, and a squirrel bolted in front of me. He sprinted ahead, looking over his furry shoulder as I slowed, expecting him to cut left or right at any minute to escape to the relative safety of, oh, I don’t know, a nearby tree, where he’d have a huge natural advantage. Instead, the mental midget kept running straight ahead, like the cartoon character trying to run away from a falling tree. I finally stopped to give the little fella an easy out before he collapsed.

Then a few days later, I approached an intersection where a squirrel was dig-dig-digging close to the curb. He saw me approach, dug some more, looked up, dug … look, dig, look, dig. At the last minute, he bolted — and ran, with a clang, headfirst into a street sign. (As an aside, I don’t know what kind of bling he was wearing to create a clang; I’d think a clunk or chunk or even thump more appropriate, but clang?) That had to hurt.

I swear it’s not just me. My father thinks squirrels are out to get him, but this nut has fallen far from that tree. I don’t think squirrels bear me any ill-will.

I am, however, haunted by one.

On my regular ride to work, there is a dead squirrel lying, face up, in the gutter. There is no apparent sign of foul play. I reckon squirrels occasionally die of natural causes and just … fall … into the street. It seems that’s what happened to this little fella.

For nearly a week, he has languished there, unmolested, his eyes accusingly wide-open and his little squirrelly claws clinched into little squirrelly fists, as if beseeching the heavens (or at least the Goodyear that did him in).

The other day, as I rolled by, I slowed down to give the little cadaver a closer look.

I swear the little bugger was giving me the bird.