A good Halloween deed.

May I tell you about my act of charity? Because when I try to tell anyone in person they want to throw up.

"I don't want to hear it!" "Bleah!" "Not over breakfast!"

Warning: Do not read over breakfast.

On Wednesday I had to go to Staples, both to drop off a manuscript for UPS shipping and to get a few office supplies. As one does. I pulled out of the driveway and noticed a couple of doors up that a typical North American Gray Squirrel had gone to its maker at some point, in a most common manner -- hit by a car sometime in the wee hours. My only concern at that moment was to put the tires on either side of the carcass so as to not get that dead-squirrel smell into the garage.

Squirrel of that type in unsquished state

Thursday was, of course, Halloween itself, and thinking nothing of it I went to walk Junior Varsity Dog Nipper in the dark of the morning. Sure enough, two doors up, we encountered that same squirrel again. But in the night he had migrated onto the sidewalk. And even in the dark of the morning I could tell that someone had been showing the deceased about as much respect as Achilles showed Hector.

So I hustled Nipper around in a YUGE circle to keep him away from the carcass.

Later that day I had a meeting, and got back at about 2:30. As I came driving down the street I saw the little gray lump over on the sidewalk, and remembered that A) trick-or-treating would begin soon and B) it would start with the youngest of the children and C) schools had closed early.

Uh-oh.

I mean, it's one thing to put up fake skeletons and phony gore around, but little kids wouldn't take this too well. Just ask Susan Konig, author of Why Animals Sleep So Close to the Road (And Other Lies I Tell My Children). The man who owns the house in front of which the deceased reposed appears to work nights, and I didn't expect him to be awake to handle this or even see it in time. So I pulled into the garage, grabbed my work gloves and an industrial-size Arm & Hammer poop bag for dealing with extra-large dog extrusions, and went to get the mortal remains.

It was not pretty. Something, possibly a raccoon or fox, had been really digging on that squirrel, in every sense. His little rib cage, empty, had been pulled clean out and left alongside the body, separated entirely but for a thin trail of, well, entrails. The head was back, the arms spread, little claws uselessly displayed, and the legs completely intact. I expected it would look bad, like an F in Bio Lab, but instead this looked more like the squirrel had swallowed a live, tiny hand grenade. Son, that's how Corporal Squeaky saved the entire patrol.

Now, I've made hay over roadkill on this very site, writing a series of mystery stories inspired by animal bodies I have found, but I never found one so thoroughly chomped up like this.

So, I gathered his attached and unattached bits into the bag, carried my prize like a happy trick-or-treater back to the house, and dumped it in the tub in the back where the dog crap sits until garbage day. Which was Friday.

I was very strongly motivated to get the garbage out early on Friday.

On the whole I am happy with this small charitable act, because kids who don't live on farms usually don't see animals in this condition, let alone animal-on-animal violence, or animal forensics. We did have a lot of kids this year, too. Coming across a dead body of any kind on Halloween is a little too on-the-nose, you know? The little tots might have started screaming.

And the teenagers might have thought of a really good prank with a porch or mailbox.

P.S.: Three days later and my dogs are still obsessed with the spot on the sidewalk where Squeaky lay. This may go on until February.