Letters from a Suburban Jail

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely."

While Dr. King was able to ultimately vindicate his actions as anything but unwise or untimely, I will merely present the circumstances of my own captivity and allow the rest of you to judge my actions. 

My family has recently decided that our house which has functioned perfectly for over 40 years has become far too warm, cozy and wonderful. Consequently, they have already painted the walls a gaudy hue of orange-pink and are currently in the process of gutting our home of its fantastically fuzzy and toe-toasting carpet, leaving a hollowed out shell of a structure covered only by cold, hard wood flooring. 

The carpet is being removed and replaced with wood in all of the other rooms as well as the hallway leading up to my bedroom. My bedroom however, is going to remain carpeted because I don't like my feet to be cold. This means that the carpenters cut out the carpet in the hallway up to the point right outside my bedroom door, leaving a free (non-attached) edge

 of carpet extending outward from my room just past the door frame. As such, when the door was left wide open I had no problem walking into my room to get my things, but when I closed the door behind me upon entering I failed to realize that the freed edge of that carpet had bunched up by folding under itself, thus raising the carpet above the crack of my closed door making it impossible for me to open my door and escape. I am trapped.

I would provide an actual picture of the door being jammed, but I am still stuck in here and my camera is on the outside. Now I must fend for myself in a room without food, water, or proper cooling facilities and insulation on a hot summer day. Oh cruel fate! To think I feared the cold with the coming of these wood floors only to find myself slowly dying in the heat... Wood is still to blame. The carpet and door never tried to capture and kill me until wood came into the picture.

Whether wise or timely, my incarceration is certainly ironic. You see, it was only mere days ago that I sat before this very keyboard calling for all of you to prepare yourselves both physically and mentally for the next move of the squirrel menace, and just as I would have had you trap and remove them from society, so have I been forced into isolation myself, cut off from the rest of the world.

This is a Havahart animal trap, which is used to trap among other things, squirrels. The trap operates by leaving the door or doors to the cage open after leaving some form of bait inside for the animal and setting the tripping mechanism. When the animal enters the trap (by its own accord) the mechanism closes the door and traps the squirrel inside... This is exactly what happened to me in my bedroom.

It has been nearly two hours. My family is gone and they are not answering their phones. The floor layers were initially on the other side of the house, unable to hear my cries for help over their music and loud power tools. They have since left for their lunch break, but I am still here. Should I not last until someone is able to rescue me, know that this was no mere accident or unfortunate remodeling casualty.

The wood and the woodland creatures have formed an alliance and are both highly suspect in this crime. Please take this message and do what you can with it. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.