Night Creatures

 You know, I haven't seen a lot of creatures out and about on my night runs through the neighborhood this winter, a couple coyotes and nothing more. Tonight, though, I'd come around a corner, and was lookin' forward to getting the last three-quarters of a mile finished. I had given a lot of drivers the old evil eye (for some reason there was a lot of extra traffic along Radcliffe), and that had sure worn me out. Anyway, as I was sayin' I came jogging around a corner, and noticed right away, a creature running across the street at a diagonal and in my direction. My first impression was that it was a cat, a very well fed cat, a well-rounded ball of grey fur. Well, I slowed my already plodding pace and cleared my throat, thinking the dumb thing maybe didn't see me. By now I'd changed my mind and decided it was an opossum that, in a second, would stop in its tracks and scurry back the way it had come, or at least change direction, away from me. When that didn't happen, I said to myself oh damn, i'm gonna have to kick this thing like a futbol. Don't get me wrong, the critter wasn't particularly fast, but its pace was steady and its course never wavered - it was still coming straight at me, so I began to wind up my leg for the boot. It was close enough that I could have spit an orange seed with a better than likely chance of hitting it right in the middle of the forehead. At the last second it gave one final acceleration and...

disappeared from view, diving right down into the storm drain that I had stopped on top of. There was a momentary rustling of leaves down below, and then that was all, silence. I tell you, I was satisfied with that outcome.