NEIGHBORHOOD CHOICES
E-Mail by Leonard W. Freeman Bio/Address

    My barred window overlooks a small field of ground sparsely covered with weeds and crabgrass. Blighting my view is a dirt road and a double fence topped with razor wire. After every meal a "Slop" truck with the remains of our meals is parked by the side of that road, and a steam line hooked to it. The aroma (stench really) can be almost overwhelming from time to time. Adjacent to the steam line is a small metal sign which proclaims I will be shot should I appear in the vicinity. As if for emphasis, the gunfire at the Guards Rifle Range can be clearly heard. This is my window on the Free World.
    A Horse who managed to escape from the Horse Barn just behind us, once raced down the road so fast it was just a gray blur. These things are important to caged men and they talk of them for years afterward. "Do you remember the Horse?" a prisoner asked me only last week.
    But the Prison has its own wildlife inside the fences. A feral yellow cat has roamed the perimeter for many years, never venturing far from the fences. It must be a very old cat by now, but still seems lithe, arrogant, and is battle scarred.
    A skunk has been roaming the grounds since I got here. It passed beneath the window a few nights ago. You could smell its progress. Not being offended by this though, we were excited to see a "wild animal" so close to us. Too, you could hear something else which marked its progress-the guards radios chattering through the night. "38 to 64," one would say, "Skunk coming your way."
    A magnificent hawk visits the prison, when other prey is scarce, to gobble up the odd pigeon. It sits for hours on the outer fence sizing things up and it's a sight to see. Course most of us feel that pigeons are just rats with wings, but even so it is hard to see him swoop down and murder one right in front of our eyes.
    Occasionally we spot transients. A barn owl became entangled in the razor wire by Segregation and was extracted with great care by an inmate who used to be a Veterinarian. I watched the rescue from my window and was sad when I learned it had died soon after.
    And a giant Canadian goose, rendered flightless by birdshot, sought sanctuary inside the fence. He stood resolutely amid the strolling inmates in the Recreation yard, unmoving and indistractable, staring at the sky overhead as if expecting his mate to return. The same man also took it out, and we hear it healed nicely.
    Whenever there's a coastal storm a few seagulls pop over to the prison to spend a few days. They cruise in and out of the fences, showing off their aerobatic skills and vie with the pigeons for handouts. They look wild and free and they jog painful memories in the breasts of prisoners with nautical pasts.
    I think most imprisoned men miss the affection of animals nearly as much as that of women. Even when they bring their drug-sniffing dog into the Units, yearning glances are cast by the very men who might be victims of her trained nose.
    While I've always had pets, I'll never again have one here. I've a Warden who keeps me from my family, my freedom, my life - he doesn't even allow prisoners to have pets. Most prisoners long for a pet, any pet. Men have been known to adopt insects and to lavish care and concern on them. Chameleons are favored, and there are a lot of them here. The only color I've ever seen them turn though is a bright green, or a sort of "off" brick color. One man took under his wing a huge bug the likes of which he'd never seen. It was a periodical Cicada - a seventeen year locust - an identification dredged from boyhood memory and confirmed by a picture in my dictionary. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the enormous insect had spent the past seventeen years as a nymph underground and would soon die.
    A couple of years ago inmates were peeling sleeping bats off the brick walls of the Units and keeping them in boxes, playing with them when the Guards weren't around. But captive bats get grumpy during daylight, and several men were bitten. Rabies shots were administered at great expense and adopting bats became a major write-up.
    Back to the pigeons. As many as thirty pigeons can be counted perched on the fences or roofs like little vultures at any time. In the past inmates would risk disciplinary action by smuggling bread out of the chow hall to feed the resident birds. When a pigeon with a sense of humor, and dead aim hit one of the Majors between the eyes, the proscription against feeding them was rigidly enforced. The self-appointed savior of the pigeons - the Prisons largest Hispanic - is not otherwise known for displays of kindness. But he feeds the birds every day and they flock to him when he returns to these outside dorms from meals. Once the myopic pigeons approached another big prisoner, swarming at his feet. No bird lover, he. "Get away from me!" he yelled, "Do I look like a Mexican?" Competing for the survival with the pigeons is a clutch of Killdeer, whose entire life cycle is enacted within the fenced space of the prison unit. (For that matter, so is mine.) They lay their eggs in a tiny crevice accessed by a slit in a culvert beneath the road, teach their young to fly by pushing them off the culvert, race the pigeons for small scraps of bread or seed and commune with each other on one in the extremely sparse grass outside my window - real jailbirds.
    Before they tore down the old boiler room to build the new one, a colony of Chimney Swifts made it their winter home. The Swallow-like birds would swirl out of the top each morning like smoke and circle the stack several times before going back down the spout in the evening. Although the chimney has been gone now for more than ten years, the swifts still visit twice each year, either out of ornithic sentimentality or because they have poor memories. They were here just last week, flying around aimlessly, looking confused.
    Like Thoreau, I have also been witness to events of a less peaceful nature. While most prisoners either love animals or fear the wrath of us who do, the men locked away in maximum security have been known to take out their animus against Society on the only available targets. Either out of boredom or just plain meanness, these full-time prisoners frequently ensnare pigeons and other birds on their windowsills using bread and string nooses and then subject the captives to such suffering as they can inflict before killing them. I wonder what the "Birdman of Alcatraz" would think of this so-called "higher form of life"?
    Caged men aren't the only villains on my little stage. A family of Killdeer use the scraggly turf beneath my window to nest and breed. This winter, because we really haven't had one, their family has came early. The culvert provides them cover from most prying eyes, but I have an "Insiders view" of them. They're neat little creatures, ring-necked and black-banded, who more closely resemble shore birds than inland field dwellers.
    They nest on the ground and fly through the night sky catching insects on the wing. Their cry is shrill and raucous, and if you walk through a field after dark, they'll fly up into your face and screech at you.
    Why this family-chose my little patch of ground when there are more suitable open fields in the area is a mystery. Three weeks ago the Killdeer hatched 5 perfect replicas of themselves, so tiny you had to blink your eyes to believe you saw them at all. Their only defense when danger is near is to freeze in place and trust to protective coloration. Usually the weeds and grass would allow them more cover, but again, they had their family too early for a lot of that to be around. All five of the newborn fitted nicely under the females spread wings when I saw them on their first outing. One of her nestlings was of an independent mind though. It would wriggle out from under her protective shelter and scamper off. No amount of screeching would induce it to return and one of the other adults would have to chase after the little rascal.
    The tiny birds grew quickly, achieving golf ball size in a matter of days. They were a source of delight and concern to we men whose windows overlooked the culvert. They seemed too small and defenseless to survive. And, sure enough, their numbers began to dwindle. First one was missing, then another, until only two of them could be seen on the field.
    One day while myself and two others watched, a huge crow - a raven - landed inside the fence. The two adult Killdeer appeared as if by magic and flew at it, driving it off. The Crow retreated to the other side of the razor wire, but was soon back in the field, just inside the fence. One of the Killdeer attacked while the other tried to lure it away, trailing a wing as if injured. To no avail. The enormous black bird had spotted one of the baby killdeer lying doggo in the grass. It pecked murderously at it a few times, then took it in its beak and flew off.
    We watched helplessly from behind our barred window. I shouted angrily, cursing the crow, natural selection, and life in general. The next day the remaining baby was missing too. All gone, all five; all that work and care for nothing. The family didn't stand a chance. The grass was too sparse and too short for concealment, the babies came too early in the year and there were too many predators around.
    If there-is a moral to this little tragedy, it might be this: if you want to raise children successfully in today's World, you'd better chose your neighborhood carefully.

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