No comfort in words

On the very day Quebec legalized medical killing this month, I committed an act of euthanasia. 

I was walking down a side street near my office in Montreal when I felt a rush of air near my head as if someone had thrown a rock past me. In fact, it was a squirrel that had lost its balance on either a tree branch or a telephone wire. 

I found it lying among some shrubs, its back legs splayed out like a frog’s, its back obviously broken. It tried, pathetically, to pull itself forward to the safety of a tree using its front paws. Then it lay back in shocked agony, unable to move