As I left the house the other day, I spied with my little eye a pair of squirrels rather publicly in the process of making little squirrels. This miniature nature documentary made me recall:

One day I returned from another tortuous day of junior high school to find two dogs singlemindedly engaged in, um, sexual relations. Or finishing, at any rate.

I'd heard that dogs sometimes got stuck in their couplings before, but always thought it an old wive's tale. Nope. This unfortunate couple were stuck together at the naughty bits.

An odd enough sight, to be sure, but one made even more odd by the physiognomy of the participants: the boy doggie (the stud, if you will) was one of those annoying little yippy dogs ironically favored by celebrity beauties and corpulent, overall-wearing bachelors improbably nicknamed 'Tiny', while the girl doggie (the bitch, if you will) was a mid-sized canine of indeterminte heritage or species. Caught in this unpleasant postcoital situation, she was attempting to free herself by shifting position and trying to wriggle free.

I think I read somewhere that the reason dogs get stuck together post-coitus is that the boy doggie's, er, member becomes grossly engorged during the act and does not quickly return to flaccidity, making it sometimes difficult to disengage. (Editor's note: I looked this up on the intertubes so you don't have to! Look here or here for more info if you so choose).

At any rate, the twisting and squirming of the girl doggie and the inability of the boy doggie to release had led to a physical position in which the average-sized girl doggie was standing on all fours and the little yippy boy doggie was suspended upside down between her legs.

I can only imagine that this made the uncomfortable human postcoital silences following drunken (and most likely temporal) couplings after a chance meeting at a tavern somewhere seem pleasant in comparison. Imagine, if you will, the awkardness of not being able to quickly flee the sight of the crime (again, if you will) with some uncomfortable and muttered promises of a future phone call.

That's the odd way my mind works, anyway. I left my squirrel lovebirds some privacy, so I can't report on the outcome of their coupling. I assume it'll all end up in another generation of squirrels for my backyard.

And so it goes.