We were driving after dark, always a risky business in the deserts of Baja California, but we were caught between villages. We thought we were invincible on the gringo trail thinking we could outpace the darkness. First, it was an overturned truckload of jicama roots, like hundreds of blind eyes or small moons seeking orbit. Then it was the donkey crossing the road, then a red steer. Our headlights cut through the darkness like kitchen knives. The stars were brilliant this far from civilization, only darkness and the weeping stars to accompany us the shoulders of the narrow road with potholes large enough to swallow the VW bug. it was a slalom course. And, the headlights were a skein of light cutting the darkness into pieces. Something striped with an impossible long tail—an escapee from a Dr. Seuss book—ran in front of us, and there was no time to swerve, no way to avoid it on the raised road bed, a slender thread built for flash floods, was like a dyke. The wheelwell thump told us it was not a lucky night for that creature. My first and last sighting of a cuatamundi, the felling of a rare animal beneath that carnage. then it dawned on me the warning not to drive after dark was equally dangerous for the local animals as well.
4/24 Write On! with Nels Christiansen
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