``It used to bother me to see dead dogs and cats lying in the road.  Still
does, but recently I visited a small town in South Carolina.  The area was
fairly flat, and there were many small farms, the houses set back a few hundred
yards from the road, and dogs would get onto the road and sometimes get run
over.  Something about this cheered me up, but I couldn't put my finger
on it for a while until I returned to Connecticut, where I have not seen a
dead dog on the road since I can remember, even though I live in what New Yorkers
call ``the country.''  Dead squirrels, possums, raccoons, but no dead dogs.

``Then I worked it out.  The presence of dead raccoons and such in Connecticut
means - ah! I means that there are living raccons around here and therefore
that raccoons haven't been so thoroughly rescued as dogs have been.  Indeed, it
means that the wild animals in my neck of the woods are in some ways more integrated
into the polis than the (ultimately domestic) dog.  If there were dead dogs on the
road in South Carolina, that meant that there were still dogs running around,
which meant that the local humane society hadn't yet rounded them all up and
killed them.''

Vicki Hearne _Bandit_ p.280