Yesterday afternoon, I saw a dead dog on the road.

Just regular roadkill like you see every so often. There wasn't anything special about the dog or the way in which it died (let's face it - though violent, it is not uncommon).

I just have never actually given any more than a glance at roadkill. Just enough to register in my head that there is something on the road that should probably be avoided.

In fact, the only time I have actually had to do more than just make a passing note on the roadkill as being in my way was a couple years back when a gopher got run over in front of my house.

That one was really annoying because I had to walk along that road to go to work and with each passing day, the smell of decaying, maggot-ridden flesh got worse and worse till the silent, invisible, road-cleaning elves came. Ugh, I have never smelled anything so nauseating in my life.

Oh wait... and then there was the time as I was leaving Michigan when another gopher suddenly shot out onto the road and got run over by the minivan right in front of me. (Too many gophers get run over - it's a good thing though because any living creature stupid enough to constantly get run over should probably get on with getting extinct).

But this one was different because 1) I didn't actually see it get killed and 2) it hadn't reached the point where it would start decaying and smelling bad and 3) I wasn't in my car; I was on a run.

So there I am, running by, and I spot this sandy-brown mongrel on the road. As I'm running by, I get this real close up look. There was this thick (but small) pool of congealing blood around it's mouth and ears.

What made this particular accident memorable (and I use the word 'memorable' in the loosest of terms) was how it struck me that congealing blood looks like sliced red jello. (This thought was closely followed by the mental image of another car running over it just as I ran by and splattering me with dog entrails - didn't happen but man! that would definitely have made for an interesting way home).