A Plastic Pen in Hand

It was easier to research violent murder for a novel than read news of the Gulf oil spill… or rather continuous oil flow. It was even easier if the articles had pictures of pelicans covered in orange crude. I looked out my mother’s living room window. She was napping, and the Times magazine was turned over so I could avoid even looking at the cover of a poor crude covered bird. The Will to Kill was open on my lap. Why was murder easier?

There’s a hook outside the window where my mother usually hangs a bird feeder. It’s gone at the moment because a squirrel has gotten bold again. She gets so angry at it that she deprives the birds. They still come fluttering to the hook in futile hope.

Why the aggravation over an environmental disaster, and fascination over violent murder? How does this relate to birds and squirrels? We don’t feed birds—except perhaps in winter—because they’ll starve. We want to see them. Their colors and patterns, their small bodies, the joy we have when they sing. The squirrel eating all the bird food takes away that joy. It’s also expensive. Even though birds can eat quite a lot of the seed version of Veuve Clicquot my mother buys them, the squirrels can eat a lot more.

The frustration hits close to home. The squirrel is a thief.

I drive a car. I wear lipstick from time to time. I buy things in plastic containers. Sometimes I forget my green-bags when I go grocery shopping. But I have never known anyone who has been murdered. I am aware of my own evil tendencies—envy, mockery, and other minor sins—but the mindset, the behaviors of a murderer are so alien to me as to be fictional.

The bird feeder is only two feet away. Half full. The troubles of songbird and thief are within my reach. My plastic pen, however, is in my hand as I write in my journal. I think about crude oil covered birds and feel culpable horror. I will never be able to push it far enough away.

So I read about murder and defy my sleeping mother to hang the bird feeder.