Eeek & squeak

on my commute to and from work i go through an area known as the spaghetti bowl. it is a joke to name such a place, really it shows just how small this big city is. traffic here is not that great, but comparatively there is nothing terrible about reno/sparks traffic. but people like to complain and they like to name so we have the spaghetti bowl. it is the only large scale intersection in town; it is where I-80 and Hwy 395 meet on the north side of town. it is usually a bit slow through there and there are frequent accidents---mostly minor but people still like to stop to look---and there is construction going on---for the last four years. today there was an exceptionally minor accident at the off ramp of 395 to get onto 80 so people had to slow down to look at the minor crunch on the driver's side tail lights of a white car and traffic crawled behind them. while i was inching along on the clutch i noticed a mouse. in the second of four lanes of traffic. there it was snuffling along the concrete like it was going to find something to eat. perhaps once its long forgotten ancestor had roamed a sparse sage brush field there, but now it was fat on the litter of passing cars. i wonder if it ever made it back to the berm.