As I drove away, it occurred to me that if anyone had been watching, they might have been bewildered.

A truck slows down in a stretch of empty highway, absolutely nothing for five miles in either direction, and parks in the opposite lane. The driver gets out and walks over to the dead antelope laying on the shoulder of the road and kneels in the sandy dirt next to the carcass.

The animal is bloated now, more than a day after its death. The top eye that the raven was trying to pull out at this time yesterday is now just a grizly, empty socket. The pink blood that ran from the mouth is, in the dawning light, now just a black smear.

The driver leans forward and rubs the cuff of his left sleeve in the tall hairs of the dead animal's neck, right behind the ears. Three times he saws it back and forth before sitting upright, looking at the broken, hollow hairs clinging to the red cloth. A quick sniff of the cuff and he is satisfied, gets back in the truck and drives off.

And that was that.

...

...

So, I suspect some sort of explanation is due. But it's not an easy one to say, much less write.

Let us just say the driver of that truck has a dying red heeler back home. She is basically in hospice care, hoping to see the full green of spring before the end arrives, which the vet said is only weeks away.

She spends most of her time in bed, carried outside to do her business at least a dozen times every day and night. She is too weak to make the simple walk to the backyard, where her sister and mother await in their final beds. Not that she could see them. It has been years now since her eyes worked.

But she loves to just stand in the front yard, face into the breeze, and breath. Taking in all the aromas of life, the neighborhood, the Mexican restaurant two blocks upwind. It is about the only pleasure she has left in life, since food became so unappealing several weeks back.

With the arrival of warm weather and the disappearance of snow, I suspect her world is full of smells now, old and new.

But she will never smell sagebrush again, nor a pronghorn.

Unless someone grabs some of that smell,

and brings it home.