Morning of the Dead

I walking past the park that's near my house on the way to school this morning. I looked up and saw a large black dog huddled among the trees. As I got closer, I noticed how thin it was. I was nearly on top of it before it became painfully obvious that it was dead. I looked around. Nothing I can do, I thought, so I just walked to work.

I was thinking about the dog and how it must have died as I continued to walk. It wasn't there yesterday, so it must have laid there over night. The dog was thin but not thin enough to starve to death. The only thing I could surmise was the cold killed it. It's starting to get pretty cold here: negative five degrees Celsius is the high today.

As I was thinking this, I noticed something on the side of the road up ahead that looked like a plastic bag. I didn't realize it was a cat until I was right on top of it. It, too, was certainly dead. This one was a little more obvious: the head was smashed. I imagined that it had been run over by a car, but then I noticed the head was the only thing hurt (and the only thing sticking out into the road). Perhaps it too died of cold and the head was only run over after the fact. Who knows?

In any case, I'm going to refrain from sleeping outside until it warms up.

R