In a lawsuit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, Marcy Meckler alleges that the owners and employees of the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie are responsible for injuries she suffered on December 3, 2004, when she was attacked by a squirrel.

This seems like a good point to stop and reflect on the competing theories of causality and the possible interconnectedness of the universe.  Some believe that events occur by chance and that what may seem to be order in those events is actually something that is imposed by the human mind, seeking to make sense of a chaotic universe and seeing patterns and connections where none exist.  Others see the hand of God, or some sort of divine force, as the only explanation for the synchronicity of distant and seemingly unrelated events that nonetheless appear to be ultimately component parts of a much larger and coherent plan.

Which sort of theory explains the fact that a small rodent in Skokie, Illinois, would leap upon the leg of an unsuspecting woman, who would then fall to the ground, suffering allegedly severe physical and mental injuries that would lead her, almost two years later, to sue the shopping center on the grounds that it was responsible for "encouraging the squirrel" to be in its courtyard and for "failing to warn the plaintiff of the squirrel’s presence," and that the lawsuit would be reported at a time when I, an attorney who once defended a very similar lawsuit by a woman who was attacked by a bat that she claimed flew out of a Sears store, causing her to fall and break her hip, would have available to me something called a "blog" on which I could reach many others with this story almost instantly, which, by delaying my departure for work slightly and also putting me in a state of extreme happiness, virtually ensures that I will be hit by a bus as soon as I leave the house?  I cannot say.

I can only be grateful, if a bit chapped about the whole bus thing.

Link: cbs2chicago.com