Tonight I chopped off a baby squirrel's head.

That's right, I spilled some blood. Around five or six, I was on the front porch grading papers and watching the cold front come in when Anne called out that Stan, our orange cat, had caught a chipmunk.

She said I needed to come kill it the thing. I could hear Stan back there meowing like he does when he's got a bird or a lizard in his mouth and he's at the door crying to bring it inside. Anne has read that cats do that because they would like to contribute to the household. She says it's a kind of pride they're meowing about. So she pets him and expresses approval.

I saw that it wasn't a chipmunk, but a little squirrel. Six inches, not counting the tail, so not quite a baby, maybe more like a twelve-year-old kid version of a squirrel.

It was cute as all get-out, but I have to say, when I saw Stanley standing over that twitching squirrel, I was proud of him for real. If I were starving, that little baby squirrel would have made the difference. Come the apocalypse, we'll be wishing we had Stan around to bring us rodents for our meager stews.

But the squirrel was twitching, mechanically opening and closing its mouth. Its eyes were squeezed shut and and the lashes shone wet. Ridiculous, I know, but it was small and soft, and I'd like to have seen you chop its head off with a shovel.

For the next few hours I've been alternatingly horrifed and cocksure proud.

I'm still debating with myself whether to post here a photo that little decapitated squirrel head. I should do it before the thing dessicates, but I don't want to look at it through a camera right now. It's so cute and so horrifying at the same time. Looking at it, I wanted to roll it in my palm like a rabbit's foot keychain.