The other day, on my way to the grocery store, a coyote ran in front of my car.

The coyote was about twenty feet in front of me within the city limits but running from one yet-to-be-developed, overgrown piece of conservation property to another giving me a rather unexpected, long look at him.

When I mentioned to a few people how strange it was to see a coyote run in front of my car en route to Zehrs, I had three people ask, “Don’t take offence, but what did it look like?”

Don’t take offence?

When someone tells you not to be offended by the offensive remark they are about to make doesn’t it take everything in your being to not be offended as you think about what that phrasing could possibly mean?

Doesn’t any sentence that starts, “Don’t take offence” really mean, “You sound like a total idiot, are you sure it was a coyote and not a squirrel?”

Don’t take offence, but what did it look like?

It looked like a Sasquatch with a bow tie and a neck tag that read, “Wile E” on it.

I opened the car door and he hopped in while we drove around plotting ways to outsmart the Road Runner.