Do Chipmunks Go To Heaven?

There was an incident today. I blame Tami.

Tami and I went to Eldora today. On the first lift ride she told me this crazy story about seeing a squirrel in the middle of a run somewhere. Winter Park? It went something like this:

Tami: It was crazy. I saw a squirrel in the middle of a run at Winter Park.
MetaMegan: That is crazy.
Tami: Yeah, I think it's the only time I have ever seen wildlife when I was skiing. And it was just a squirrel.
MetaMegan: Once I saw a porcupine at Vail.
Tami: Really? That's crazy.
MetaMegan: Yeah, I think that is the only wildlife I have seen,
Tami: I know, you see tracks all the time, but never the animals. I would like to see more animals.

Fast forward a few runs and we were headed to the Corona lift along a terrible, icy, hard packed cat walk. I felt a twinge of guilt that I forgot to tell Tami that you have to go 1000 mph at the start or else run out of steam and fall, and have to take your snowboard partway off and hike to the top of the next hill before you get going for a little bit, but then you aren't going fast enough and it happens again. It's sort of rough. Also, it was 4 degrees. So if you were going fast enough, then any exposed skin started to freeze.

So, I was flying, when out of the woods came a chipmunk. Right at me. There was nothing I could do. So I screamed. And then when I both heard and felt a thud underneath my snowboard I screamed again. And then I turned and looked over my shoulder and I thought I saw a chipmunk hobbling off into the forest. There were two witnesses:

Witness1: I've never seen anything like that.
MetaMegan: Me neither
Wintess1: That was so crazy.
Metamegan: I know.
Witness2: He's going to die, you know.
MetaMegan: It was an accident! There was no way I could have avoided him!
Witness1: You don't even want to know what happened.
MetaMegan: I think someone just told me.
Witness1: Well, I think it was quick at least.

Witness1 (from a distance): OMG - See that girl over there, you are never going to believe this...

Meanwhile I was waiting and waiting for Tami. She finally arrived:

MetaMegan: Whatever happened to you can't be worse that what happened to me.
Tami: I had to take my goggles off because they got steamed up from the tears I was crying.
MetaMegan: You win, what happened?
Tami: I think I broke my tailbone.
MetaMegan: I ran over a chipmunk with my snowboard and killed it.
Tami: Oh my God. Is there blood on your snowboard?

So then Tami and I were on the lift sharing stories of people falling off ski lifts and we realized, if our earlier discussion about wanting to see wildlife conjured a chipmunk out of nowhere, we should choose our subject matter wisely. In fact, we should just leave and nurse our physical and spiritual wounds over a beer in the comfort of my living room. So that is what we did, being careful what we said or thought the whole way home.

In retrospect, it turns out we were pretty lucky that we didn't conjure up any bad ski lift karma.