by Manny Howard
I purchase the squirrel trap from a farm supply store on Amboy Road, on the western edge of Staten Island. Pleasingly ramshackle, the feedstore appears a vestige of Staten Island’s not too distant agrarian past. The last working farm in the borough, a dairy, was sold for a subdivision in 1980. Today, here outside, looming behind this freestanding, three-story, tumbledown store, the hills of the former Fresh Kills Landfill dominate the horizon. When I was growing up, Fresh Kills was known only as the dump. Each day the dump on the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary received twenty barges, each laden with 650 tons of the city’s garbage. The dump was a monument to the varied blight that residents of the city—and especially Staten Island—bore. Opened as a temporary facility in 1947 by the city’s infamous construction baron, Robert Moses, when Fresh Kills finally closed in 2001, the dump was the largest city landfill in the country (that honor currently belongs to Puente Hills Landfill in Whittier, California). Even in a city with an ahistorical memory such as this one—a city where the most obscene scandals defy memory because they crash across the headlines, often two at a time, with a regularity that exhausts its citizenry—a testament to the scale of the dump, even here in dysphoric New York City, all these years later, Staten Island’s reputation continues to suffer: the home of Fresh Kills Landfill.
Baiting the squirrel trap is no great challenge, assures the proprietor, a big-boned Irishwoman massaging the ash of a Virginia Slims cigarette between her lips while another burns down in the faux-crystal Foxwoods Resort Casino ashtray on the cluttered counter. “There’s a trick to the raccoon trap, though,” she warns. Having seen the wire box, enormous in comparison to a squirrel trap, I reflexively add it to my shopping list. You never know. In a foolproof method she learned from a longtime customer of hers just down the road, you bait a raccoon trap with a bagel. The bagel has to have a schmear of cream cheese on it (I have since been told that an open can of sardines does the job nicely). The proprietor edges out onto the sales floor between fifty-pound sacks of varied animal feed piled to her waist like sandbags at the mouth of a pillbox. Stepping over a ringworm-medication display that has fallen on its side, she marches toward the western wall of the store and ascends a ladder to what could be called the first shelf, a narrow loft really, about eight feet off the ground. “I have one here somewhere,” she calls from behind more sacks of feed. “See if you can find nylon twine. You can tie the bagel in the trap with that. There should be some under the counter.” Sure enough, right next to the rubber grip of a .38-caliber Ruger pistol rests a spool of purple nylon twine and a box cutter. Leaving the gun scrupulously untouched, I hold the twine and the knife up for her approval “These?” I call with studied nonchalance. She stands holding a three-foot wire rectangular box in the fingers of one hand, crouching under the loft’s low ceiling, nods, and smiles. I wonder if she knows she asked me to go rooting around in her armory.
The trip to Staten Island takes the balance of the afternoon. When I finally emerge from the traffic, there’s no time to start a new project. Work on The Farm has become so all-consuming that the evening dog walk is the only opportunity I allow myself to talk with people other than Caleb and the immediate family. Not that the family—well, Lisa—are speaking to me all that much. Gossiping with neighbors on Thursday, June 28, I discover that it has been an eventful day in the neighborhood beyond the confines of The Farm. The police pursued a young man suspected of drug possession through the backyards between my own street and the one behind our house. One neighbor on the scene reports that, when the police apprehended their perp, the alleged drugs were no longer in his possession. The working theory was that the kid had dumped the contraband in one of the yards… . Yards? Fine. Farm? Big problem.
Had the perp or his pursuers made it to—worse, through—my garden? If so, what damage had they caused? Is a low-level possession bust really worth the health and safety of my tomatoes, my still-delicate beets, or most important, my potatoes? By early July I will have given up gossiping with the neighbors altogether.
I set the squirrel trap that night, hoping that, if I do a lot of sneaking around and do not then announce its presence in idle conversation, Lisa will not notice it. Discretion is a skill that comes easily to the people I admire most. I am afflicted by the desire to share all, even some of the thoughts I know are best kept close. The charm that Lisa finds in that forthrightness has waned. When it has a meaningful utility, Lisa does occasionally slap the Southern charm on a little thick, but it’s not at all affected. In her bones she has a genteel sensibility I know little about. It is safe to say that the possibility of squirrels barking away blind with panic in traps set at the perimeter of the vegetable garden would produce an equal and opposite reaction in the two of us. I know this when I set the traps. I set them all the same. Too much is at stake to do anything else. I comfort myself with the thought that it is the rare city-dweller indeed who can pick out a squirrel bark from the cacophony of the canopy (Lord knows how a raccoon will react); still, Lisa must have no idea the traps are there. If I can only keep my mouth shut. And this old place here, it’s even more difficult to do right by than Tanya, really, because it’s abused and it’s steep, and I’ve accumulated a history of wrong guesses here, announces Wendell Berry, referring to his Kentucky tobacco farm and then his wife. And so I live in this commitment all the time, knowing very well how attractive mobility is. I’d really like to be loved by somebody who doesn’t know me—who would be susceptible to charm. I appreciate how fine that would be, but I know it wouldn’t last and that I couldn’t disguise myself for more than, oh, maybe forty-eight hours.
I nod in agreement. I’m getting used to this fellow Berry’s rhythms. He’s not done. I place the first trap hard by the fence—the pests’ preferred route—and begin staking it to the ground. Marriage is the inevitable metaphor for the kind of agriculture and community life that I’m talking about, he says, his words slowing, their camber taking a familiar dip to telegraph significance just in case I’m not paying proper attention, and it’s an inescapable preoccupation for a man who wants to be well married. If you’re going to sustain anything, you’ve got to have populations that are totally committed.
“So, should I tell her about the traps, or not?” I ask casually, popping the soil from my hands against my workpants, looking around for the strategically perfect location for trap number two.
It is days before a squirrel finally bolts inside my trap. It barks, furious and afraid, hanging upside down from the low wire ceiling, warning others away. The rectangular box barely has room for the critter to turn around. Good. Let him yell. The more he yells, the less tempting my tender shoots will be to the hordes of squirrels that teem in the trees above my garden. He barks for two days, during which time I do not notice a single other squirrel. They’ll understand what I have only begun to fully appreciate: my vegetables come at a cost. I consider feeding him, but decide against it, reasoning that a sated squirrel would soon become tame. The last thing I need is another mouth to feed. During lunch on the third day, I empty a trash can and coil a garden hose at the bottom of it. I turn the spigot and the can slowly begins to fill. By the time I finish my sandwich, the can is full. I turn the hose off and fetch up the squirrel trap from the garden.
Caleb is just poking the final bite of his Cuban sandwich into his mouth when I unceremoniously drop the trap into the water. It sinks like a stone. Caleb chokes on his food. The thin, plastic garbage can begins to shake as the squirrel thrashes at the top of his cage, trying to catch his breath less than an inch beneath the now agitated surface of the water. “That is so fucked-up,” observes Caleb, with laudable reserve considering the circumstances, shaking his head, wiping his mouth, brushing his mane from in front of his face and looking anywhere but at the trash can even as it ceases vibrating.
“What was I gonna do, release him?” I ask, peering into the can to observe the drowned squirrel pressed against the highest edge of the trap. I did not expect a trash can full of water to vibrat
e so vigorously as the squirrel thrashed about. I am consumed with remorse, but intent on disguising it. For some reason, projecting the impression that my barbarity has not only dispassionately been executed, but was also rigorously planned, seems important right now.
“I guess? Yes,” replies Caleb.
“Just release an angry, starving squirrel?”
“Yep.”
“What’s the point of trying to scare off the squirrels if they know I’m going to release them?”
“They’re going to know? The other squirrels?” asks Caleb, smirking at me.
“They knew he was in the trap, didn’t they?” I point at the drowned squirrel, then up into the empty canopy. “Anyhow, they say that drowning is the most peaceful way to die.”
“Squirrels?”
“People say that drowning is easy, not that drowning squirrels is easy.”
“Was it?”
“Yes. It wasn’t all that hard,” I say, making the mistake of peering into the trash can. The squirrel’s front claws and orange teeth are frozen in death, gripping the wire. “Not once I’d made the decision to do it.”
“So fucked. You mind if I go? I gotta change for bartending school.”
“No. That’s cool. You wanna bag the squirrel before you go?” I gingerly lift the cage half out of the water with my index finger.
“Fuck you.”
Since the drowning, I have seen plenty of squirrels in the trees above my garden, but I have never seen one among the plants in my garden.
CHICKEN RUN
The passing of The Old Gray Lady has put a point on it for me and Caleb. With her on ice in the garage freezer, we are forced to confront a truth we had treated as suspicion. Like the tilapia before them, the rabbits are never going to provide protein for The Farm. It is agreed. We need to move on. The nearest Agway selling day-old meat birds is forty-nine miles from The Farm. Armed with a newly minted learner’s permit, Caleb wrestles the late-model Land Cruiser out over the Outerbridge Crossing and on to Englishtown, New Jersey, while I catch up with the newspaper and try not to look out the windshield.
Caleb and I both prefer it when he drives the truck. He still isn’t all that good at it. He is easily flustered by multilane intersections and my barked, last-minute directions, but what Caleb lacks in driving experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. That this combination is precisely the cause of just about every car accident involving teens doesn’t deter me. His day is full of such grim and filthy work, I feel obliged to let him drive at every opportunity. The twenty-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser handles like a poorly maintained fishing trawler. The brakes are spongy, and there’s enough drift in the steering so that, unchecked, the truck will cross two lanes of traffic over a few hundred yards at a modest speed, but Caleb has little to compare this experience to and seems unfazed by the truck’s less than standard performance.
Figuring that, like every other Brooklyn-raised kid I know, he’s completely ignorant of the details of internal combustion, I see no reason to burden him with the information that, somewhat miraculously, the engine is running though it fires on just five of six cylinders, the gas tank and the oil pan both leak, and I am keeping a watchful eye on the gamboling needle of the thermostat for fear that what is left of the engine will overheat—not that any of the gauges are the least bit trustworthy.
The Agway is cluttered with fencing and feeding and watering implements and sacks of dirt and rock (various), but don’t let these chaotic surroundings fool you. For Lisa this would be the equivalent of her favorite designer-fashion boutiques Scoop and Intermix—stores that limit their merchandise to offerings from such designers as Smythe, Chloé, Stella McCartney, and Adrienne Landau—rolled together. For the agricultural set—of whom I now count myself a member—this is heaven.
After warming up by perusing the ready-made doghouses and discussing what the goat standing on top of a plastic igloo in a metal pen might cost us, Caleb and I just about skip through the front door holding hands. The one-day-old chickens (meat birds) are not hard to find. They are both loud and smelly.
We are like a pair of heartland tourists set loose in the H&M Fifth Avenue flagship store. Playing absolute beginners, we assemble our meat-bird-growing kit—watering tower, feeder, and flytraps.
Flytraps are of special interest to us both. The flies have overrun our paltry defenses, the coils of sticky paper that hang by the dozen from the garage ceiling and that of the back porch. Out of desperation we have resorted to hanging the coils from a lattice of bamboo suspended above the barn. The tape festoons The Farm. So, when we stumble on professional-strength agricultural flytraps we become engrossed, obsessed really. The larger of the two says it will trap and hold sixty-four thousand flies. “How about a couple of these?” I suggest.
“You think?” says Caleb.
“Sure,” I say, doubt creeping in, looking at the label one more time.
“You’re talking 128,000 flies, dude. You really think there will be that many flies back there?”
“You’re right.” After a pause, I put a pair of the smaller traps in our shopping cart. Caleb was wrong. Both of the twenty-four-thousand-fly-capacity traps were full in less than three weeks. I order two more pheromone baits for each trap online. I pay the additional charge for overnight delivery.
The average fly lives only about eight days. That’s where the good news stops. The female lays eggs on animal excrement, rotting food, and decaying organic matter that the larvae that hatch consume. If a breeding pair of houseflies began their work in April and all of their young were to survive, the original pair would produce an estimated 191.1 quintillion offspring by August. That sounds about right to me. As far as I can tell, the dominant subspecies of the domestic fly that took up residence on The Farm were the house, bottle (both blue, or Calliphora, and green, Phaenicia), blow, and the reliable black garbage fly.
Houseflies are said to spread disease including but not limited to conjunctivitis, poliomyelitis, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, anthrax, leprosy, cholera, diarrhea, and dysentery. The larvae of the most common flies feed on dead and living tissue of mammals, causing blood poisoning and occasionally death. While feeding, flies puke up the contents of their stomachs onto their meal. The meal dissolves; they then hoover the sludge back up into their stomachs. Flies shit while they walk, wherever they walk. The effective range of a fly varies by species, but most can range from between two and twenty miles. Why any fly would ever wish to leave The Farm is beyond me.
When it comes to selecting our meat birds, Caleb refuses to take any part. He says that he won’t take the karmic hit that would result from selecting chicks he knows will end up becoming meat. “Fine,” I say, determined, agitated because I’m suddenly also mildly uncomfortable to be doing the selecting alone. “Just hold the box up higher so I can toss them in quickly.”
The store manager, inspired by our dizzy spree, offers to throw in a free mature chicken of unknown parentage. Inflamed, we accept before inspecting the offering. The bird is clearly a stray. She’s hideous to look at, almost entirely devoid of plumage, with scabrous legs and feet. She’s a walking infection—and we are halfway home before we think better of having taken The Stray out of the cat carrier to let her roam the back of the Land Cruiser, spreading who knows what parasites and diseases.
We end up with twenty-five mixed-breed chicks: Cornish Cross, Rhode Island Reds, and blue Plymouth Rocks (or blue Rocks), mixed with a salt-and-pepper team of bantams (strictly a vanity purchase), and four ducklings. This might seem like an overabundance, but based on the experience with the rabbits, we’re expecting a pretty significant mortality rate, and a man’s gotta eat. We haven’t built a coop yet. This detail will not escape Lisa. Tomorrow we will build the chicken coop. Caleb and I are ambitious about the plans.
Lisa’s long-simmering resentment about the roiling chaos that I have unleashed on our already hectic life is increasingly hard to manage. She finds it harder and harder to remember that she once though
t The Farm would be good for us, would pull me out of my torpor. Daily, she is embarrassed by the growing pile of garbage and the stink of shit. But, given “some space, or time away from the farm,” she suggests, she will probably recover. She assures me that deep down she understands the importance of it in my life and will continue to quietly endure the effects of my growing fixation. It is a sincere attempt at reconciliation, and, of course, the right thing to do. I know Lisa wishes that she believed what she says.
Which is why returning from the Agway with twenty-six chickens and four baby ducks without any advance word is no minor tactical error. Lisa requires no explanation, just stands, still in her business rig, staring steely while Caleb shovels livestock out of a box perched on the tailgate of the Land Cruiser and onto the driveway and the kids dance at our feet among a score of day-old chicks. “The rabbits were a nonstarter,” I announce, the cheer in my voice entirely unconvincing. “We had to make the switch.” The use of the plural is lost on neither Lisa nor Caleb. Both launch disapproving glares that bore into me. Any empathy for me and my agrarian misadventure that Lisa has hidden away in reserve has vanished.
Only just returned from her office, Lisa has not yet made the already difficult cognitive shift she has described as necessary just to enter the front door of Howard Hall. The sight of the chicks on the driveway leaves her dumbfounded. Ambushed, confused, her brooding hostility now open rage, Lisa, angry beyond speaking, tears in her eyes, retreats immediately to her dressing room upstairs. If, rather than continue to wrangle the day-old birds as they, peeping as they go, spread out all over the garden, I had followed her upstairs, I would have found her packing a bag, preparing to abandon our house and The Farm, ready now to take the kids to live in the safety of the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park, her favorite hotel in Manhattan.