The tiny gap between his prominent front teeth and his curiously
alliterative name seemed to indicate that Earl’s squirrel trapping
profession might have been pre-ordained. His detailed description of a
humane removal plan for the squirrels that were tearing holes through my
ceiling further convinced me that he had found his niche, or vice versa. The
idea of humanely catching the squirrels appealed to me. I like squirrels.
But when they became squatters and inhabited my nighttime silence with
scratching and mating sounds and eventually poked their groping paws
through to my bedroom, I needed Earl.
His plan was to set traps throughout the yard, and over a period of a
week to catch the five or six squirrels he imagined were nesting in that
corner of the old Victorian home where I lived in the Bronx. As part of his
professional inventory, Earl brought cases of chunky Peter Pan from a
bodega in Queens, claiming the generic brands didn’t hold the squirrels’
interest. His Havahart cages had long ago lost their factory sheen, so
there was no need for camouflage. Earl assured me that they worked best
when they were a little ragged and rusty.
“They might be ugly,” he said, “but they are disinfected with Clorox after
every catch. To stop the spread of diseases.”
Earl placed two old and ugly but germ-free traps around my yard and left a
Peter Pan trail that led to the sensitive triggers. He hoped that in the chill
and hungry New York winter, my emboldened squirrels would run
headlong into their Havaharts, nibbling contentedly on the chunks of nut
not found in generic brand bait.
“You got some fine cats there. Better keep ‘em inside during the trapping
period. Catch me lotsa cats when I set traps for possums, ‘cause then I
use smoked fish. But a hungry cat might like peanut butter just as good --
and every cat stuck in that cage is another squirrel I have to reset for.
Caught the same gray tabby four times at a house in Yonkers. A stray. And
they say cats are smart? I guess there’s no accountin’ for hunger. But the
guy wouldn’t pay me for removing a stray cat, even if it was a nuisance to
‘im. And I don’t give no free rides to Westchester.”
Earl took his catch up to a few different wooded areas in Westchester
County, and let them go into the relative wilds. I asked him if he thought
of leaving squirrels at other homes and sticking his business card in the
mailbox. He flashed his gapped grin and snapped his fingers.
“If I ever need an agent I know where to come!”
Westchester County’s squirrel population must be growing at a good clip.
Earl caught seven at my house in a week.
Sometimes it’s the smallest things that stir the memory.
I suppose I should have been happy that Earl’s plan was working. On the
first day, just as I was leaving for work, I checked the two traps. I saw
one black squirrel with nut-brown eyes, quiet and tensed inside. Another
gray-brown one was wild with desperation. In both, I saw deception,
accusation and fury aimed at that steel door that blocked their return to
my ceiling or wherever they had once called home. Little paws gripped the
metal bars of the cage as they sniffed the air for any sign of change.
I stood very still and watched. I remembered prison, looking through
barbed wires at the mountains around me, knowing there was music out
there. And I couldn’t get to it. I remembered the scent of my wool
blankets. My bed. From the floor of the Mexican prison where I slept fitfully
for 33 nights, I recalled sunlight making lacy patterns on the ground under
my jacaranda tree. Like these squirrels, I was uncertain of how that steel
door had snapped closed behind me, and more uncertain of when or how
it would open again. With great effort I distilled myself to essentials, trying
to save the delicate parts of me from the harsh realities of imprisonment. I
tried to make myself small and hard, so I could slip through unnoticed. I
remembered the other women’s nut-brown eyes, sometimes wild, other
times wide and calm. I remembered the women in prison and the many
traps that had caught them by the leg, not so humanely as Earl’s. I
thought of the metamorphosis of captivity. How a cage, austere and
corroded, is the entire world for a moment. And then it opens to
Westchester. And it might as well be Jupiter. And you might as well be a
squirrel, for all the familiarity you feel with the way you look now. With the
way you react to the new freedom around you. With the way to find home.
You sniff the air for any sign of familiarity, but there is none.
The new freedom I found on release was dotted with prisons I hadn’t
noticed before. Dependence, insecurity, doubt. “There’s no accountin’ for
hunger,” Earl would have said. I followed dozens of nut-studded trails to
dead ends while picking my way home.
That morning, I don’t remember if it was cold, or if I was breathing. All I
could see were the traps. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that stir the
memory. And sometimes nothing has to stir it – it is just there. I see their
faces still. Full lipped, heavy lidded, high cheeked, drawn, vibrant, painted,
wan, changeable faces. I see them on the streets of New York. There is
Bertha reading The Wall Street Journal balancing on the A train. And
Maritza gave up crack and is selling chocolates wrapped in colorful foil,
shaped like bunnies for Easter. That woman walking her baby in Central
Park looks like Fátima, but her baby would be bigger now. These are not
the women I knew in prison. I want to ask these women: “Can you
possibly imagine what it’s like not to have a choice? To wake each day and
know exactly what is waiting for you? To feel minuscule and helpless
against something you cannot control?” But I am afraid. I am afraid they
will say “Yes. I know.”
There are so many prisons. Some we just wander into unaware.
I can tell you about a prison I knew once. About a woman who slept
underneath a bed and a woman who stomped a rat to death with her
foot. About a drug runner turned playwright and a Zapotec woman who
could teach God about dignity. About women so hungry for crack they
would sell a half-eaten sandwich for a dime, and women hungry for a
choice, for retribution, for a voice. I could tell you about this prison and
these women and their walls and the wisp of their lives that curled around
my own. I would tell their stories to cut a hole in the mesh, to help them
escape… or to help me escape.
The black squirrel made a scolding noise. My reverie broke and I walked to
the station to take the one train downtown to my ragged office where I
spent my day chewing on chunks of nut.
On the last day of Earl’s trapping schedule, a Havahart cage was sprung,
shut tight but empty. I asked him about it. He said it could have been a
bird. They are often small enough to fit through the holes in the wire.
“Their little bird eyes don’t see that wire around ‘em. They walk right out
as if nothing has happened. You can’t keep a bird in one of these cages.
They got freedom in their genes. It’s not a choice for them. They just go.”
Many of the women I knew in prison will be finding their own new
freedoms by the time you hear my voice.
Many will be left behind to listen to the reminder of birdsong from the trees
outside the barbed wire. The squirrels will adjust to the taller trees of
Westchester, and I will unfurl again, closer to home with every step.
alliterative name seemed to indicate that Earl’s squirrel trapping
profession might have been pre-ordained. His detailed description of a
humane removal plan for the squirrels that were tearing holes through my
ceiling further convinced me that he had found his niche, or vice versa. The
idea of humanely catching the squirrels appealed to me. I like squirrels.
But when they became squatters and inhabited my nighttime silence with
scratching and mating sounds and eventually poked their groping paws
through to my bedroom, I needed Earl.
His plan was to set traps throughout the yard, and over a period of a
week to catch the five or six squirrels he imagined were nesting in that
corner of the old Victorian home where I lived in the Bronx. As part of his
professional inventory, Earl brought cases of chunky Peter Pan from a
bodega in Queens, claiming the generic brands didn’t hold the squirrels’
interest. His Havahart cages had long ago lost their factory sheen, so
there was no need for camouflage. Earl assured me that they worked best
when they were a little ragged and rusty.
“They might be ugly,” he said, “but they are disinfected with Clorox after
every catch. To stop the spread of diseases.”
Earl placed two old and ugly but germ-free traps around my yard and left a
Peter Pan trail that led to the sensitive triggers. He hoped that in the chill
and hungry New York winter, my emboldened squirrels would run
headlong into their Havaharts, nibbling contentedly on the chunks of nut
not found in generic brand bait.
“You got some fine cats there. Better keep ‘em inside during the trapping
period. Catch me lotsa cats when I set traps for possums, ‘cause then I
use smoked fish. But a hungry cat might like peanut butter just as good --
and every cat stuck in that cage is another squirrel I have to reset for.
Caught the same gray tabby four times at a house in Yonkers. A stray. And
they say cats are smart? I guess there’s no accountin’ for hunger. But the
guy wouldn’t pay me for removing a stray cat, even if it was a nuisance to
‘im. And I don’t give no free rides to Westchester.”
Earl took his catch up to a few different wooded areas in Westchester
County, and let them go into the relative wilds. I asked him if he thought
of leaving squirrels at other homes and sticking his business card in the
mailbox. He flashed his gapped grin and snapped his fingers.
“If I ever need an agent I know where to come!”
Westchester County’s squirrel population must be growing at a good clip.
Earl caught seven at my house in a week.
Sometimes it’s the smallest things that stir the memory.
I suppose I should have been happy that Earl’s plan was working. On the
first day, just as I was leaving for work, I checked the two traps. I saw
one black squirrel with nut-brown eyes, quiet and tensed inside. Another
gray-brown one was wild with desperation. In both, I saw deception,
accusation and fury aimed at that steel door that blocked their return to
my ceiling or wherever they had once called home. Little paws gripped the
metal bars of the cage as they sniffed the air for any sign of change.
I stood very still and watched. I remembered prison, looking through
barbed wires at the mountains around me, knowing there was music out
there. And I couldn’t get to it. I remembered the scent of my wool
blankets. My bed. From the floor of the Mexican prison where I slept fitfully
for 33 nights, I recalled sunlight making lacy patterns on the ground under
my jacaranda tree. Like these squirrels, I was uncertain of how that steel
door had snapped closed behind me, and more uncertain of when or how
it would open again. With great effort I distilled myself to essentials, trying
to save the delicate parts of me from the harsh realities of imprisonment. I
tried to make myself small and hard, so I could slip through unnoticed. I
remembered the other women’s nut-brown eyes, sometimes wild, other
times wide and calm. I remembered the women in prison and the many
traps that had caught them by the leg, not so humanely as Earl’s. I
thought of the metamorphosis of captivity. How a cage, austere and
corroded, is the entire world for a moment. And then it opens to
Westchester. And it might as well be Jupiter. And you might as well be a
squirrel, for all the familiarity you feel with the way you look now. With the
way you react to the new freedom around you. With the way to find home.
You sniff the air for any sign of familiarity, but there is none.
The new freedom I found on release was dotted with prisons I hadn’t
noticed before. Dependence, insecurity, doubt. “There’s no accountin’ for
hunger,” Earl would have said. I followed dozens of nut-studded trails to
dead ends while picking my way home.
That morning, I don’t remember if it was cold, or if I was breathing. All I
could see were the traps. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that stir the
memory. And sometimes nothing has to stir it – it is just there. I see their
faces still. Full lipped, heavy lidded, high cheeked, drawn, vibrant, painted,
wan, changeable faces. I see them on the streets of New York. There is
Bertha reading The Wall Street Journal balancing on the A train. And
Maritza gave up crack and is selling chocolates wrapped in colorful foil,
shaped like bunnies for Easter. That woman walking her baby in Central
Park looks like Fátima, but her baby would be bigger now. These are not
the women I knew in prison. I want to ask these women: “Can you
possibly imagine what it’s like not to have a choice? To wake each day and
know exactly what is waiting for you? To feel minuscule and helpless
against something you cannot control?” But I am afraid. I am afraid they
will say “Yes. I know.”
There are so many prisons. Some we just wander into unaware.
I can tell you about a prison I knew once. About a woman who slept
underneath a bed and a woman who stomped a rat to death with her
foot. About a drug runner turned playwright and a Zapotec woman who
could teach God about dignity. About women so hungry for crack they
would sell a half-eaten sandwich for a dime, and women hungry for a
choice, for retribution, for a voice. I could tell you about this prison and
these women and their walls and the wisp of their lives that curled around
my own. I would tell their stories to cut a hole in the mesh, to help them
escape… or to help me escape.
The black squirrel made a scolding noise. My reverie broke and I walked to
the station to take the one train downtown to my ragged office where I
spent my day chewing on chunks of nut.
On the last day of Earl’s trapping schedule, a Havahart cage was sprung,
shut tight but empty. I asked him about it. He said it could have been a
bird. They are often small enough to fit through the holes in the wire.
“Their little bird eyes don’t see that wire around ‘em. They walk right out
as if nothing has happened. You can’t keep a bird in one of these cages.
They got freedom in their genes. It’s not a choice for them. They just go.”
Many of the women I knew in prison will be finding their own new
freedoms by the time you hear my voice.
Many will be left behind to listen to the reminder of birdsong from the trees
outside the barbed wire. The squirrels will adjust to the taller trees of
Westchester, and I will unfurl again, closer to home with every step.
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal spring 2008 non-fiction
trap by mary ellen sanger
trap by mary ellen sanger
