Driving at 3 AM and listening to the radio and thinking about three young men I observed over tea and toast at a Denny’s.

The last guy into the restaurant, comes in on a laughing swagger. His buddies are the servers and the cook. He has just hit a skunk; and at 75 miles an hour he says he still has time to see the skunk spraying as he dies. The man laughs. His car stinks, he says. Turned off the heater, but still. The others laugh at him. They all grin and go on to talk about other road-kill they have known.

I leave after I am done and turn on the radio. The guy being interviewed is an author and musician, based on the few minutes I heard. He starts talking about how we have lost touch with nature, and how he is going to write his second book from the point of view of an animal looking at human beings and I snort the tea I just sipped out of my nose. At 75 miles an hour.

What do you think nature is but what we as humans do? I mean really, what image do we have of nature that we cannot see that killing inadvertently is exactly what nature does. There’s no “advertent” about it. Beings do what they do to meet their needs, whether it is for food, or speed, or socialization and to meet those needs the beings will run cheerfully over the extraneous “other.” What difference if it is truck hitting a skunk or an elk trodding on a shrew?

And as for writing from the point of view of the animal – we all know what an “oreo” is and an “apple” — what are we going to call a fuzzy critter on the outside and an smooth skinned ape on the inside? Oh yeah! Mickey Mouse.