Soft creamy brown fur on its chubby cheeks as it held its paws in front of its mouth. Munching on nuts and grains found from the dirt around the barren land several miles down the street from my old house. My Mother called them her "friends," although they've never met but in spirit they were her soul children. These small prairie dogs would run about the unspoken land and some of them had families and pups perching on its mound of dirt surrounded by soil covered with weeds.
At times, I would drive by that land for the scenery and to witness my Mother say, "My friends are out today. They must be looking for foods for their families." I would smile and with a lift of joy inside my heart, I felt satisfied of this moment in life. Just to spend the time with my Mother inside the car, driving by these friends of hers, made the novelty of life to be without sorrow. As if time stood still and life was about my Mother and me, in the wilderness of the city and streets surrounded by our small animal friends.
These prairie dogs would mate, heterosexually, and create families as the seasons changed from Summer to Winter, they hibernate and impregnate, then give birth early Spring. The small pups would come out during Summer, ready to find nuts and pebbles to chew on as foods. Its parents sensed the pup's whereabouts and as with an antennae, they felt it moved outside of its mound with a hole underground. The parents would run as fast as possible back to the hole and the pup would return underground, for it was not yet safe for it to find food on its own.
These prairie dogs families were my friends too, as my Mother often reminded me, "even the smallest things as these are valuable in the eyes of God. How are you not more valueable to Him?" I would hold my smile for each time she reminded me and for each time I drove by, purposely for her.
Unlucky ones were roadkill, and I recalled some on the street, bloody and squashed. I blinked for an instant, because I wanted them to stay alive forever, with their pups as parents with its families. Every life became valuable in my eyes, because of these small animals. They never bothered humans in any way, shape or forms, as they lived underneath the ground equalizing the biodiversity. Never have I ever found any justice in their death on the street as roadkill, and all I could hope for was for these prairie dogs to stay on the unspoken land, breeding and making my Mother smile.
Just write.