How to Catch A Squirrel

Bill discovered, to his utter amazement, that writing was hard.

He stared at the empty screen, willing the words to come out. He knew his novel would be great, award winning, and an Amazon Best Seller. He just had to write it.

An idea flickered in his mind, a beautiful scene of grace, and meaning. As it traveled down his shoulders through his arms, he considered it; was it too elaborate of phrasing, too strong an opinion, too suggestive of a verb? Would anyone like it at all? He edited the scene, cutting out what didn’t work as it moved through his fingers, then on the page, until all that remained was just one word. The.

Earlier that day Bill had put on his tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches, his soft jeans and slippers to step into his backyard toward his first day of retirement, and this new phase of his life.

A grin stretched across his face as he looked around. Bill had a coffee mug in one hand, and his notes file, a leather-bound collection of his thoughts and ideas, in his other as he walked his new commute, the 20 steps to his small writing studio. A few apples ripened into a glowing red across the yard. A squirrel shook some leaves as it jumped limb to limb. The clean, crisp air vibrated with potential energy. Today Bill will write!

He had woken up at his regular time, energized on the first day of his long-awaited break from work. He took his time reading the paper, grinding the coffee beans in his new grinder, then making a cappuccino in the elaborate espresso maker his wife bought him for his retirement.

“You can become a coffee snob,” she said with a grin. “Bore everyone with your arcane trivia about single origin coffee and grinding theories!”

But after 30 minutes and three different batches of too thin or too thick coffee, Bill made a cup of instant coffee like usual and decided to get to work.

Opening the door of the studio, the smell of oak and furniture polish greeted him like an old friend. The room, just 10 feet by 10 feet contained perfect solitude. Positioned in front of a large window, a new ergonomic chair and his father’s old wooden desk overlooked his small backyard. An overstuffed easy chair sat in one corner, over a maroon and green patterned Turkish rug, under a replica Tiffany lamp, all purchased for this studio.

Floor to ceiling bookshelves towered against the back wall, filled with all the books he had in the house. Three quarters of the shelf space yawned empty, waiting to be filled in by his soon-to-be best sellers, of course.

Bill creaked into the chair, powered on the computer and opened his notes folder.

“Finally!” He said, reaching the moment he had talked, and dreamed about for decades.

Bill had kept a file of his story ideas for over 30 years. Waiting just the right time to write, first his job, his marriage and then of course his kids all delayed his start. He had talked about a quiet place to write for years, designing and building this writer’s studio for just this day.

He opened a fresh word document and typed in the title he had picked out,

“Believe you can and you are 90% of halfway there - and back again.”

Bill stopped there and took a drink of his coffee. He looked around the room, giddy with delight. A small bookshelf next to him held a dictionary, thesaurus and the Chicago Manual of Style, while wood plaques hung on the walls called out quotes from his favorite writers. He murmured the quote framed just next to the large window facing his back yard, and apple tree.

“If a story is in you, it has to come out.” —W. Faulkner. Everything was perfect!

Bill looked back down at the cursor, the small black line waiting for his first word to come out.

He flipped through the collection of notes, but the snippets, once so important, didn’t make any sense. Torn scraps of paper that contained characters with no more substance than shadows, exotic locales that vanished like mirages, vapid villains, hesitant heroes, dull damsels, and plot twists as straight as his pencil. The once -brilliant flashes of insight had burnt out, fireworks leaving only drifting smoke through the air.

He tossed them to the floor; he didn’t need notes. He took another sip of his coffee and then put his fingers on the keyboard, ready to type.

Nothing.

His attention darted like a hummingbird, fast, quick, and never landing. A movement out the window caught his eye. A squirrel crouched on a tree branch, staring in at Bill, munching on a bright red and green apple.

“Stop stealing my apples!” Bill shouted at the window, but the animal, a remarkably fat grey squirrel with a huge fluffy tail, just continued to eat the apple in its paws, staring back with a tilt of its head.

Bill threw a pen from his desk to ricochet off the window, but the squirrel didn't flinch. Only when he stood and banged to rattle the glass did the squirrel drop the apple to scurry back up the tree.

Something about the squirrel looked familiar. Bill laughed out loud at the thought. The animal was a spitting image of his last manager, Chuck.

20 years younger than Bill, Chuck had dark beady eyes, and a full, fat face that looked like he stored nuts in his cheeks. Chuck who had been so dismissive as Bill had packed up his office on his final day at work.

“So you made it to your last day!!” Chuck had accosted him as Bill struggled to fit 30 years of a career in insurance into a small brown box. “You must be excited to get out of this rat race!”

Bill looked at the cubicle-filled office space where he had spent 50 hours a week for half his life. Race was not the right word for the tired faces, faded walls and the grey industrial carpet where the coffee stains blended in with the odd pattern of brown and grey. A plastic plant tilted dangerously in a cracked stand near the door.

“Oh goodness yes!” Bill said as he piled up file folders on top of the pictures and knick-knacks at the bottom of the box.

“You can just toss most of those old files.” Chuck frowned at the splitting box.

“When you, or Bruce, call with questions about my accounts, I can refer back. You know I documented everything-” Bill said.

“Everything is digital now, so-” Chuck looked around at the bare walls, and empty desk. “It’s like you were never here at all.” He muttered, as he put his hands on hips. “Martha said you’re going to be a... writer in your retirement?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, I’m going to write the Great American novel!” Bill stopped packing with a sparkle in his eye. “I built a studio in my back garden so I have a place to write.” Bill looked up to see if Chuck was in awe, but Chuck had turned to stare at his phone.

“Have you started?” Chuck asked not looking up. “Good writing is difficult-”

No,” Bill said, “ but I have the themes in mind; love, and loss, searching for life’s meaning. It will be great! You think writing is difficult? Come on, I put words on paper everyday!” Bill mimed typing. "Writing insurance recommendations, emails, your weekly summaries.” He pointed at Chuck. “That’s one project I’m glad never to do again!” Bill chuckled.

Chuck growled. “Those TPS reports are important-”

“-I'll invite you to the book signing!” Bill said. “I have a date, it's in six months, let me give it to you-” He scrawled a date, time and location on an unsubmitted TPS report form.

“You’ve scheduled a book signing party for a book you haven't written?” Chuck asked.

“You know how I like to plan. And with the ideas I’ve collected, snippets of conversations, characters, locations- how hard can it be?”

Back at his studio, Bill thought of the future book signing event, the envy and disbelief from his ex-colleagues when he published the book he always talked about. Bill grinned to himself. But what if they didn't like it, or didn't even read it?

They weren’t readers, those people; Chuck, Bruce, Sarah or Christina. Martha read, or at least he remembered seeing her with a book, though it was a romance novel. He couldn’t write a romance novel, he’s never even read one.

Should he write a romance novel?

A small smirk grew on his face, “Danielle Steel eat your heart out!” He shouted in the still room. Bill’s fingers flew.

-I want you! She groaned breathlessly, throwing herself at his feet.

-No I want you more! He groaned ardently. He reached forward to unbutton her blouse, his two hands dexterous like a child’s fingers, but not as small, and with hairy knuckles.

-“Take me! she bellowed, her eyes were as deep and dark as an algae filled pool behind an abandoned house.

He clacked down on the backspace button. Maybe not romance.

What about a strong opening? He typed “ In the beginning, James created the heavens-”

No, That sounded familiar.

And hit the backspace.

“It was a dark and stormy night-”

He tapped the backspace button over and over with a single hard finger.

The blank space of the empty screen grew, expanding to fill his entire vision. The cursor still waited, thundering in hard repeated flashes.

Bill squeezed his head with both hands, trying to push the words out. The cursor blinked back, mocking him and accusing him of being a fraud. “Maybe I’ll start tomorrow.” Bill spent the rest of the day re-organizing his shelf of writing self-help books.

The next morning Bill was back at his desk, word document open, and blank.

“Tone, I need to get the tone right.” Bill spoke into the silence. “And the theme! What should the theme be? Individual versus society, yes! How individuals should give into their desires for the good of everyone, stop being so greedy, return to the farms, to live and work in community!”

Bill placed his fingers on the keyboard, but they locked up. “Does that sound too much like communism? I can’t write about communism.”

Leaves rustled outside his window. The squirrel glared back, another apple in his paws.

Bill stood up shouting. “Stop stealing my apples!” The squirrel opened its mouth, shouting back, in chirps and screeches. Bill didn’t speak squirrel but knew curse words when he heard them.

The audacity, the gall! This was his backyard! Bill gritted his teeth, jumping up, and one step later he lay prone on the floor, impact pains in his knees and hands; he had tripped on his own strewn ideas and plans. By the time he got outside the squirrel was gone, and his hands shook with fury. This was war.

By nature a planner, he outlined his goal, described his antagonist and wrote out a multi-step plan for ridding his yard of squirrels.

But squirrels Bill discovered were darn hard to catch.

Bill documented his attempts to get rid of the squirrel. He wrote page after page of notes, musings and plans. Nets and buckets, traps, and spiked fencing, whatever he tried, failed.

Desperate after weeks of frustration, Bill moved to chemical warfare, buying industrial grade poison and covering half a bag of peanuts with it. He put them in a bowl right in the middle of the yard and waited.

Watching, Bill knew he would finally win, and not only that, he’d get to watch the squirrel, his valiant opponent, die. But how long would it take?

Bill read the poison label, and the graphic description of the poison’s effects; internal bleeding, excruciating pain, and a slow death. The image flashed in front of him of the squirrel coughing, its eyes wide and strangling on its own blood.

Bill quickly collected all the poisoned peanuts and wrapped them up in plastic into the trash. Bill documented that too.

Instead, Bill bought the ‘Squirrelinator trap’. The top of the line metal cage promised live capture with no blood. Nevada, he decided, the next state over would be just far enough to let it go.

The next morning he found the trap sprung, and the bait gone. Recognizing a superior intellect, Bill called a truce.

None of this had helped writing his novel. Bill began to fear opening the door to sit in his studio, unable to face the gaping hole of a blank screen. Each day he added a few words before a dullness came over him, and a growing fear that after all this time, he had no story to write.

Searching the internet for how to get past writer's-block, he broke down and reached out to a writing coach.

Not tech- savvy, Bill struggled to get his computer to even connect to the video call with Joanne, his writing coach, and then the meeting got worse.

“Bill, I read your submission, and it had words, but it was un-focused, like you puked on your computer in Times New Roman.” Joanne said, with a sad shake of her head.

“I’ve tried to write what I know-”

“-You spent your whole career in in-sur-ance!” The coach’s voice crackled high-pitched through Bill’s writing studio. “Do not write what you know. This is fiction, you’re supposed to make shit up! Do you have something else, anything else?”

“I have other work.” Bill lied. “Do I call you my editor?” The woman on the other side of the video rolled her eyes.

“Bill, let’s be clear.” The woman leaned back with folded arms. “You pay me hourly to talk, and review your manuscript. You can -call me- whatever you want, as long as you sign the checks.”

“ Well, Joanne, Editor, I haven’t been writing much, I’ve been dealing with a pest problem, and that has taken up my time.”

Joanne turned to look off screen, whispering. “Just another crackpot, can’t put two words together-”

She turned back with a smile. “Why don’t you send me anything else you have written. I’d love to look at something that isn’t, what’s the word…. tedious. Talk to you next week.” The video link ended.

Bill went back through his writing so far. He collected the three paragraphs he had spent the last week working on and increased the font to at least look longer. Bill re-read the three paragraphs, then cut it down to two. Two pretty good paragraphs.

He typed up the email to Joanne and was about to attach the file when a chirp through the window caught his attention. The squirrel danced on top of the Squirrelinator chomping on an apple.

The simmering pot of Bill’s frustration boiled over. Bill pressed send on the email and launched out the door to catch the little beast. He missed once again. Failure smelled like rotting apples.

The next morning, Bill couldn’t decide between pancakes, the box of mix in his left hand, or eggs, the carton held securely in his right, when Joanne called.

Hearing the ringing phone he hesitated. He had to pick one, placing the other down to answer the phone.

Would putting one down be the decision? Bill continued to deliberate, looking back and forth between each, until the call went to voicemail without a decision being made.

He finally chose to put down the eggs, mainly because they were heavier. Did that make it a decision? And called back his editor.

“I read your story and I loved it!” Joanne gushed. “I thought you said you had not been writing- but it was perfect, the frame, the themes of love, loss, and redemption. I teared up!”

Bill sputtered, his mind racing to remember what he had written in his two paragraphs and if there was anything in it that connected with love or loss, and how it could be worth crying over. He had cried over it of course, but that’s because it was so terrible.

“I thought you were writing a novel, but I love your short story!” Joanne continued. “The allegories and metaphors of the fruit and the traps- amazing!”

“I wrote about two men standing on a corner next to a tree-” Bill said, confused.

“And the squirrel- what an interesting character choice!” Joanne shouted.

Bill pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it, then out through the kitchen window at the squirrel, grinning back at him.

Bill thought back, which file did he send to Joanne… He slammed his hand into his face. Damn!

“But, you liked it?” Bill asked

“Liked!?" Joanne shouted. “It was the best thing I have read in years. I want more! I want a whole collection of shorts just like this one! I laughed my ass off!” Joanne’s voice echoed through the empty kitchen.

*************

“I can’t believe you completed a book, and got it published in just six months?” Chuck said.

“It wasn’t the novel I intended,” Bill turned to Martha, signing her copy of the book. “But I had a good editor, and she helped put it together.

“The picture on the cover kind of looks like you, Chuck.” Martha pointed.

“Hmm, I don't see it.” Bill lied, and signed a book for Chuck.

“How did you catch it, and get that fat squirrel to sit on your computer keyboard?” Chuck asked, examining the cover.

“To catch a squirrel? I don’t really know the best way. You have to just keep trying.” Bill said, looking up at the line of people waiting to buy his book. “Pretend you're not looking for it, and then one day you'll find it sitting in your office waiting for you.

It’s not that hard, not that hard at all.”