After getting home from work - a lovely forty-five minute drive from historic St. Marys Georgia to ole Jacksonville - I proceeded to clean up the place a little, answer mail, etc. etc.
And then I found the present.
Walking into my room, it was cool and crisp, early spring air wafting from room to room. I reached over to pick up my book I was finishing - Kim Harrison's The Outlaw Demon Wails (latest entry in the Hollows series) - and I saw it.
Laying splayed out on the floor, surrounded by small puddles of blood staining the carpet, was a squirrel.
A dead squirrel had been brought to my room, up a tree, through a window screen, and deposited on the floor near my dresser. There were no visible tracks, and no disturbed scenery that indicated a struggle, but some blood had soaked into the sandy-colored carpeting.
One leg was missing and the throat looked like it had been savaged by some predatory beast. An eye had been gouged out, while the other still remained connected loosely to the socket. It wasn't terribly fresh, still oozing blood, and seemed to have air-dried in the room. The rodent's head look like it had been bashed against a tree, perhaps from being dragged up the small oak outside my room.
Thank you Ellesieux. I know you did it, as Little Bit remains too small to carry a squirrel up a tree and Twerp does not climb the stairs, let alone drag a carcass half his body weight up a twenty-year old leaf factory.
I placed the gift on the balcony.
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