Leaving their mark

There is a small scar on the left side of my upper lip that I've had for the past year and a half. It's not something to laugh at but I suppose the way I got it is somewhat comical, mainly because it's the worst injury I sustained in an incident that could have ended more seriously.

I was rushing to the back door to hand a nut to a squirrel who was standing there, staring in.

Let me repeat that: I was rushing to the back door to feed a squirrel.

And I do mean rushing. Rushing so fast and so carelessly that I hooked my leg on the leg of our dining room table and went crashing down, face first, on our ceramic tile floor. I did not even have time to try to break my fall with either of my arms - and perhaps that is a good thing. I at least must have turned my head to the right, somehow doing the right thing, before I hit the floor which soon became splattered with blood, as if a crime scene had occurred.

Yes, even with a Jackson Pollock style outpouring of vital fluids on our beautiful tile, I continued to crawl to the door, nut in hand, and yes, I fed the squirrel (who, by the way, was still waiting there, quite unsympathetically.)

Crazy? Perhaps. But nothing more horrible had happened - and after a trip to the ER to get my seriously split lip stitched back together by a plastic surgeon, I was on my way.

That squirrel, by the way, had been a personal favorite of mine for two years at least. He was a sassy male, a very in-your-face kind of guy, and when he migrated to another territory three months later, I missed him terribly.

I still do.

These animals come and go in all our lives, don't they? When I see the scar on my lip, I think of him. But most of the marks they have left on my life are less visible (I'm grateful for that).

But they are there. Most definitely, they do remain.