A Large Flock of Small Birds: Essays
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University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2021 A Large Flock of Small Birds: Essays Rebecca Hanna Jacobson University of Montana, Missoula Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Part of the Nonfiction Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Jacobson, Rebecca Hanna, "A Large Flock of Small Birds: Essays" (2021). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 11768. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11768 This Professional Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A LARGE FLOCK OF SMALL BIRDS: ESSAYS By REBECCA HANNA JACOBSON Bachelor of Arts, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 2009 Professional Paper presented in partial fulfillMent of the requireMents for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing The University of Montana Missoula, MT May 2021 Approved by: Scott Whittenburg, Dean of the Graduate School Graduate School Judy Blunt, Chair DepartMent of English Chris Dombrowski, First Reader DepartMent of English Lauren Collins, Second Reader Davidson Honors College i Jacobson, Rebecca, M.F.A., Spring 2021 Creative Writing A Large Flock of SMall Birds: Essays Chairperson: Judy Blunt ii Contents Welcome to the Nuthouse ............................................................................................................... 1 A Fair Shake .................................................................................................................................. 11 EleMental ....................................................................................................................................... 23 One Across .................................................................................................................................... 32 Now and Then ............................................................................................................................... 49 “Very, Very Dangerous to Live Even One Day”: Reading Mrs. Dalloway as a Post-PandeMic Novel ............................................................................................................................................. 58 A Large Flock of SMall Birds ....................................................................................................... 77 iii Welcome to the Nuthouse I have InstagraM’s algorithm to thank. That’s what served me, on a Tuesday evening in late February of this year, an account called @squirrelsofmissoula. When I clicked, I landed on a sea of tightly fraMed photos of squirrels feasting upon sunflower seeds at a tiny wooden picnic table. It had snowed in Missoula recently, and in several photos the squirrels wore white flakes on their thick winter coats. In one shot, two squeezed their torsos underneath the table, scrounging for fallen seeds. In another, a lone squirrel stood on top of the table, tall on its hind legs, showing off the honey-hued fur of its belly. Its tail swooshed softly to the side as it held its paws to its chest. Its inky whiskers stretched wide. Snowflakes clung to its nose and chin. CreaMy crescents of fur riMMed its liquid-black eyes. It was staring directly at the caMera, directly at me. I realized I hadn’t taken a breath in a while. I inhaled deeply and then texted a couple friends—one of whom promptly informed me that a cousin of hers in Colorado had, for Months now, been posting such photos of her own. Alongside sourdough baking and jigsaw puzzles, squirrel picnic tables are a pandeMic- era trend. The craze seeMs to have kicked off in March 2020, right as much of the country went into lockdown, when Rick Kalinowski, an out-of-work plumber in Pennsylvania, posted a few photos of his handmade table in a Facebook group called “All About Squirrels.” In the pictures, an eastern gray squirrel sits on its haunches at the table, which is mounted to a fence, and grips a peanut in its paws. The photos have been shared more than 280,000 tiMes. Kalinowski would go on to set up an Etsy shop, Squirrelly Treasure Co, which got 400 orders in its first 24 hours. He’s since disMantled the shop, but there’s no shortage of other options on the site. $19.99 gets you a siMple cedar model with a screw through the center of the table serving as a corn cob holder. A farmhouse-style table ($29.99) features a dark stain and white-painted legs, and you can add a 1 three-inch bucket in one of seven colors for $1.80. Another with a torched finish ($26, sealed and waterproofed for longevity) has a metal feeding bowl set into the table. A Navy veteran makes a dual feeder (currently marked down to $35.95) that boasts both a corn cob mount and a tiny tin bucket. DIYers can score a $15 kit, while high rollers can splash $69.99 on a saloon featuring Miniature barstools and a customizable sign. The latter has 74 five-star reviews and, based on comMents, seeMs to have been a popular (and very well-received) Father’s Day gift. According to a New York Times story from DeceMber, a furniture maker in Long Beach, California, made a one-off table from several repurposed maple wood skateboards. A Michigan man, meanwhile, built an entire café: four tables encircled by a fence, a tiny coat rack at the entrance complete with hand-twisted wire hangers. A sign welcomes diners to Maison du Noix—French for “The Nut House”—and lists the four-course meal of mixed seeds, stale pizza crust, “peanuts on the full shell,” and a dessert of “counter-softened apples.” Squirrel picnic tables might be no more than a pandeMic fad, an adorable and perhaps slightly deranged manifestation of our collective cabin fever. But the act of supplying snacks for swishy-tailed arboreal rodents has deep roots in this country. In fact, it’s because AMericans fed squirrels that the aniMals exist in our cities in the first place. That’s right: urban squirrels, so ubiquitous they’re little more than background noise, were deliberately introduced—and fed, and sheltered—by humans. In a truly fascinating paper published in the Journal of American History in 2013, a University of Pennsylvania professor naMed Etienne Benson travels back to the early 19th century to explain how squirrels, naMely eastern grays, ended up in our cities. At the tiMe, Benson explains, squirrels were woodland creatures, supplying meat for frontiersMen and Indigenous AMericans. Occasionally hunted for sport, they were also known for swarming across rural landscapes in moveMents so massive John JaMes Audubon believed theM a distinct species: 2 Sciurus migratorius, or “Migrating squirrel.” “Astounding,” “iMMense,” “unbelievable,” wrote 19th-century observers, describing throngs that likely numbered in the thousands or even Millions and could becaMe phenomenal pests in agricultural areas. “Mountains, cleared fields, the narrow bays of our lakes, or our broad rivers, present no unconquerable iMpediMents,” wrote naturalist John Bachman in 1846. “Onward they come, devouring on their way everything that is suited to their taste, laying waste the corn and wheat-fields of the farmer.” In response, rural AMericans set bounties and organized mass squirrel hunts. For a few years in Ohio, men got a $3 credit if they turned in 100 squirrel hides with their taxes. If there was a squirrel in a city, it was probably a pet; the aniMal was in vogue aMong wealthy faMilies in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1772, BenjaMin Franklin, then serving as a diplomat in London, arranged for his wife, Deborah, to send a squirrel across the Atlantic to a friend’s daughter, a young woman naMed Georgiana Shipley. Georgiana called the little guy Mungo and he proved an enormous hit, until the day he escaped and was killed by a dog naMed Ranger. In an epitaph for Mungo, Franklin described Ranger as “wanton, cruel.” Of Mungo he had this to say: “Few Squirrels were better accomplish’d; for he had had a good Education, had travell’d far, and seen much of the World.” Deborah soon dispatched a replaceMent squirrel; Georgiana naMed this one Beebee and wrote to Franklin in 1774 that “he grows fat and lively, and has as much liberty as even a North AMerican can desire.” In 1779 Georgiana reported Beebee still kicking: “The AMerican Squirrel is still living, & much caress’d; poor fellow! he is grown quite old & has lost his eyesight, but nevertheless preserves his spirits & wonted activity.” So as a rule, urban AMericans didn’t share space with squirrels. The New-York Daily Times reported in 1856 that an “unusual visitor” in a tree near city hall had drawn hundreds of onlookers, who grew so rowdy trying to lure down the escaped pet that they had to be dispersed 3 by the police. But tiMes were changing: as those New Yorkers gawked at that bushy-tailed runaway, other urban centers along the Eastern Seaboard were staging experiMents in squirrel introduction. Philadelphia caMe first, releasing three into Franklin Square in 1847, soon followed by Boston and New Haven, Connecticut. According to Benson, 19th-century AMericans saw squirrels as a way “to beautify and enliven the urban landscape at a tiMe when AMerican cities were growing in geographic extent, population density, and cultural diversity.” In other