The Squirrel Man of Throgs Neck

Robert Stroud, the "Bird Man of Alcatraz," was well known for raising and selling canaries, an activity that led to the idea that state penitentiaries could be used for rehabilitation instead of punishment (Ok, I know, Bentham thought of it , too...) in the United States (and yes, I know that there is an actual panopticon in Philadelphia). Stroud got so famous, that he was depicted by Burt Lancaster in a film called, unsurprisingly, The Bird Man of Alcatraz. Oddly, some people liked Burt Lancaster so much, that they wanted Robert Stroud to be freed, which was deemed to be a bad idea, given Stroud's activities when he was not yet in prison (like the ones that got him into prison in the first place).


Robert Stroud, public domain image taken by a federal employee in the course of business.

So, this seems like a rather sinister little tale, the charms of Burt Lancaster notwithstanding. OK, the considerable charms of Burt Lancaster, especially at that period, notwithstanding, hubba hubba.

The problem with the story of the Bird Man from Alcatraz, in my own humble opinion, is that it then casts a sort of sinister light on other people who seem to have a special connection with the animals. Take, for example, the nice man who was feeding the squirrels when I got lost on the Bronx the other day.

(left) A squirrel eating a nut. Image by Aaron Logan, from http://www.lightmatter.net/gallery/albums.php. Used under Creative Commons license.

Now, I know I should probably not be driving in the Bronx with Out-of-state plates on the car. It's still not terribly certain why I was even in the Bronx--probably I wasn't paying attention and missed the exit for the Cross Westchester Expressway.

Be that as it may, I wound up in a neighborhood of those little Levitt mini-Cape Cods that were rather popular after WWII. Outside one, which had a picture of a rather vicious dog on the gate, was a man feeding a couple of dozen squirrels and pigeons. His pockets bulging with nuts, he told me that I was in the "trahg's neck" section of "da branx," which I interpreted to mean that I was close to the Throg's Neck bridge and not the Tappan Zee bridge or even the George Washington bridge as I had hoped. He then helpfully went into the house and pulled out a map, while continually feeding squirrels and pigeons, and sent me on my way.

(Right) An original Cape Cod (some of the Levitt versions were smaller). Public domain image published in 1920.

The whole scene put me in mind of the nice man who left out a bag of nuts for the squirrels in Joy in the Morning, a much less successful novel by the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.