The Myth of Wile E

Phaser on Overload

Dougie's old Polaroid camera took a little figuring out. I was a bit alarmed when it made a high-pitched whine like a phaser on overload. I accidentally took a blurry picture of my pants and two orangeish, blurry pictures of my fingers before I got the hang of it.

(When we were growing up, no one but Dougie was ever allowed to touch the camera, his prized possession. This rule particularly applied to me. Dougie knew I was fascinated by Things that Scrolled Out of Things, whether they were the colorful prize tickets that spewed out of a Skeeball machine or the scratchy paper towels that rolled out of dispensers in restrooms. To me, they were like the endless handkerchiefs that streamed from a magician's tuxedo sleeve; I would keep pulling them out, trying to find the end. By the age of eight I'd been banned from the corner deli for repeatedly emptying their "take a number" machine of its little Decepticon-shaped paper slips. So, Dougie had feared, I guess wisely, that if he let me near his camera the result would be endless close-up pictures of my quizzical eyebrows, and no film left for his ducks.)

Once I got the hang of the camera, my first (intentional) subject was the view from my living room window, where I could see a corner of the woodpile, a whole lot of trees, and a patch of bright blue sky. Maybe it was too late to give Dougie spring, but I could still give him my view of the outdoors.

My second subject was the flying squirrels. I knew it would soon be time for them to "make their way in the world," as the fairy tales put it. They had started eating solid foods—apples and pea pods, hickory nuts and pecans. They even liked zucchini all right.

I'd built the squirrels a nesting box in the old apple tree, fashioning it out of some wood scraps I'd found at the dump, and lining it with pieces of flannel and the stuffing from an old pillow. I'd started putting the squirrels out there for a little while each day, to get them used to the idea of being on their own. They'd snooze for a few hours, then glide and scramble their way right back to me in that funny way of theirs, hang-gliding and base-jumping, scurrying and belly-crawling, and then they'd climb into my pocket. If they couldn't find me outdoors, they'd scamper along the Long Trailing Zucchini, sneak in the kitchen window, and make themselves at home.

Taming them had been a cinch, but wilding them might be another matter.