...were you perhaps the cheeky little squirrel whose rear end I photographed and posted here last month?
The other day as I was coming from the office to my car, I found a very recently deceased squirrel belly up on the pavement of the nearly empty campus parking lot. There's something about seeing little animals dead in the middle of the road or on the hot pavement that really saddens me...to think that they died in such a lonely, unnatural place, little bodies exposed to further mangling by passing cars. So, even though he was already dead and it most likely made no difference to the squirrel at that point, I pulled him gently off the pavement onto a spot where there was a bush and mulch.
Then (and I know it may sound weird) I decided to take photos of him, not sure what I'd do with the pictures. It brought to mind the 19th century photos you see of children laid out having already died -- the only photo, probably, their parents would ever have of them. OK I'm getting a bit maudlin.
There was a period of time when I made collages, like piecework quilts, from little squares and triangles of photos cut from magazines, brochures, whatever gave me the color, texture, and pattern I wanted. Having seen that I could create a collage on ribbet.com, I decided to experiment with that using my dead squirrel pictures. I cropped, adjusted various settings, including hue, obviously, and copied and rotated to get some bits I could use. I offer this as a memorial to the little squirrel.
On my alternates album I have posted the same thing but with a bit of what ribbet.com calls "kookiness" applied -- more or less random rotation of the individual tiles. If you have the time to look at that and tell me whether you think it adds or detracts, I'd appreciate it.
http://365project.org/mcsiegle/alternates/2013-07-12
Of course, if the whole thing is too macabre for you, I will totally understand.
