Spectacularly Stupid Things I've Done: Watch Where You're Walking Edition

I whole-heartedly embrace the bare-footing movement. Yes, that's right, my feet are unabashed nudists. Shocking, no? My fat little tootsies are like wild horses-they refuse to be tamed and made prisoner inside some hellishly sweaty footwear prison. On occasion though, my feet do have to endure a few short stints inside a shoe-shaped holding cell.

You all know my dear Vitamin-A enriched bloggy friend, Carrot Jello, right? Well, she's so kind she would give you the shirt right off her back. When I met her last summer we happened to be wearing the exact same shirt so she instead gave me the shoes right off her feet. Really, she did!

Everytime I wear those black and rubbery Croc-knockoff shoes I think of Carrot Jello and delight in the fact that while we don't live close to another at least our foot sweat can co-mingle inside the same pair of shoes.

As most fellow and former Houstonians know, Houston maintains a stifling 100 percent humidity level even during the night hours.

I wouldn't describe myself as having a "lead foot" but a "hot foot" would be wholly accurate.

So as I was toiling away during the pre-dawn hours the salty perspiration dripped from my every pore. Yes, the sweat just rolled off my Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, and likely from my Eyes, Ears, Mouth, and Nose, too!

Looking for relief I kicked the Carrot Jello Croc shoes off as I got out of my truck to load up some more newspaper bundles from the back.

Humongous curbside piles of discarded pine needles is a pretty common sight around here so I thought nothing of it when I parked next to one such Pine Needle Welcome Mat blanketing the street.

Blithely I walked barefoot to and fro from the back of the truck to the front of the truck each time stepping on the oddly squishable pine needle pile.

It took about the fifth round trip for the neurons in my brain to communicate with the neurons in my feet and in one startling moment they both realized, "Heeeeyyyy, these pine needles aren't crunchy when we step on them. Where's the familiar stabby sensation they usually make on our bare feet?"

So I squatted down to have a closer look at what I perceived as a friendly Pine-A-Palooza Party..........and then I started screaming, for there, lying in the gutter, was a completely flattened one-dimensional squirrel carcass that I'd been traipsing across as though it were a Squirrel Skin Rug.

The poor Mammalian rodent was so steamrolled it could have been used to write stuff on and then rolled up and secured with a whimsical piece of ribbon. The Dead Squirrel Scrolls.

How I wished that I had a private nurse so at that moment I could turn and bark at her, "Nurse, sterilize these, STAT!" as I held out my festering feet.

If squirrel guts hold some sort of mystical power that'll transform dull, crusty skin into a thing of radiantly flawless beauty, then I shall have the most prettiest feet ever.

*This post won Runner-Up in the essay contest, 'The Roadkill And I Joined Together And Became One......'. Elastic was rewarded a beautiful new squirrel skin cap and squirrel nut ear muffs. Congratulations Elastic!!!*