I need to know where the squirrels go

on having anxiety at Yale

Written in 2021, during the fall of my junior year, when I was kinda going through it and not sure whether Yale was even a place I could be.

Nowadays I’m an alumna, I live off campus, I don’t have the feelings that inspired this piece anymore. But I’m editing and posting it now because there’s still something about it that I’m proud of; it’s poetic, playful, and at turns slightly psychopathic in a way that’s unique from most of my other work. It’s fiction and honestly I had a lot of fun rewriting it.

I’m also posting this because I do think it’s worth acknowledging that people have the feelings that wrote this piece, and there’s a way to make it through. So if you’re a student and this really hits for you — let me know :)

---

I need to know where the squirrels go.

Because when I leave campus and walk through the real world I see fat squirrels and ugly squirrels and ratty-lookin’ scrawny squirrels. Squirrels who eat trash and screw each other under portapotties. Squirrels who don’t follow the sidewalk. Squirrels with patchy fur and withered limbs—squirrels who are imperfect. 

But from the Branford courtyard I only see this one, solitary, healthy-but-not-fat, silky-but-not-greasy, perfect looking squirrel. 

I know that there could never be a natural squirrel population of one. Rodents have way too many babies for that. And I don’t know much about squirrel habitats, but—would one squirrel really have such a well-defined territory and never venture beyond? 

And how did this squirrel get here? This courtyard is a little island of green surrounded by gates and streets. Did his ancestors run this same land for generations without noticing a college being built over top of them? 

Everything at Yale is so intentional and unnatural. Everyone has stories about seeing a tree that they swear wasn’t there the day before. Or walking home late and seeing men planting tulips in the middle of the night. Manipulating the squirrel population feels like an obvious aspect of Yale’s landscaping practices. 

So I want to know if they audition the squirrels. I want to know if there’s a squirrel admission process, if only 6.9% of squirrels have that special something it takes to live in a Yale courtyard. I want to know if there’s a Squirrel Admissions Officer who does a “holistic review process” of each squirrel.

But really, when I look around and only see perfect squirrels, the question that keeps me awake at night is what Yale does with the imperfect squirrels. 

I’m wondering what happens to a squirrel who gets old and scrawny and ugly, a squirrel who twitches and shudders and doesn’t frolic anymore, a squirrel who isn’t as glossy and energetic and high-achieving as Admissions expected it would be. A squirrel who is broken and anxious. 

Even Handsome Dan gets replaced every few years before he gets wrinkly and begins that breathless wheezing that’s bred into bulldogs. The tulips are uprooted as quickly as they were planted. Why not retire and replace the squirrels, too? 

I want to know if the easiest solution is to poison the underperforming squirrels and then shake their limp little bodies off the trees in the morning. I wonder if there’s some disillusioned, underpaid man tasked with putting their furry lifelessness into a trashbag. I used to think they would hunt them down with a cute little squirrel gun, but now I know that Yale would never give anyone that much individual attention.  

I want to know if they put unseen little traps behind the shrubs. In the middle of the night maybe a squirrel scampers in there and suddenly he can’t get out its small its metal

its cold on his feet he cant run cant jump there arent any trees in this small cage world he skitters and screams and claws against the bars of his little squirrel cell 

let me out he says this is not life this is death this is something evil and unknown he says

to be in this cage is to die i am powerless lifeless i am nothing i am trapped i am small and wild and to run is to be free but theres nowhere to go here i cant breathe— 

I wonder if the man checks the trap when the morning is still night, when the sky is still gentle and periwinkle. I wonder if that little squirrel stands shaking, exhausted by his own agony. 

I wonder if that little squirrel looks up at the man with fearful dark eyes and says please let me go sir you dont understand i may not be perfect but i am a thing that is meant to live—

I want to know if Yale recycles the aging, unimpressive squirrels. I want to know if that man drops the squirrel off at a lab and when that squirrel looks around he sees hundreds of his brothers listless in their cages. Shivering without their hair. Panting, weighed down with tumors. Drugged and mindlessly bumping against the walls of their cells. They’re all silent. It’s as if he is underwater, everything muffled and unreal.

I want to know if, the next day, they release a new Branford Squirrel who will scamper around this perfect courtyard until the day he, too, becomes imperfect. 

Maybe the man takes the squirrel to an off-site warehouse and puts the cage on the ground as he fills in a massive sink. The squirrel is still screaming but he feels unheard and unhearable he feels like his voice itself is caged it doesn’t matter what he says because there’s nothing he can do hes screaming because he knows he is already dead but theres something still alive in him that screams like a man who feels a coffin lid on his chest and still cries out saying no no im alive im alive i am meant to live 

The man picks up the cage and the squirrel sees the sink below him and his heart is pounding. He can’t even scream anymore. The man plunges the cage into the sink and all at once everything is a blur the squirrel cant see cant breathe cant move hes floating he cant breathe this isnt how it was supposed to end is there really so little between life and death that it all could end so fast is death really so small and vengeful to find him in a place like this he cant breathe he cant see this is it its all going dark his lungs are exploding within him he cant breathe he cant— 

I need to know what happens to the squirrels because I know what it’s like when you can’t breathe, can’t speak, when you’re trapped and alone in an ivory cage unable to say what you’re bucking against or what you’re running from.

I need to know what happens to the squirrels because sometimes the animal inside me cries out i am caged and chased and i will only live until dawn i am something too small and real for whatever heartless greedy thing it is that rules these dark castle walls. 

The wild parts of me are clawing against this cage gnawing against the metal they’re screeching and pleading sobbing saying i am meant for more than this i am meant to be free i am a living breathing thing and that should be enough who cares about my resumé love me because my skin can feel the wind and my eyes can see moonlight. love me because i am wild. i am not perfect and never was. 

nothing free and beautiful can ever be unblemished and if I was lovely enough to be let into this courtyard why do I have to tear myself apart to keep up? Why is it not enough just to be in love with this world? There is nothing feral in the wild and I never wanted to become a beast thrashing against its cage; I am a gentle thing ashamed of the way I’m always falling apart and tearing the walls down with me. 

I don’t feel real until I’m halfway down Merritt Parkway. It isn’t until I see the open sky and raw forest that my heart stops skittering around inside of me. I remember how to breathe somewhere south of New York City. 

I need to know where the squirrels go because I don’t know what happens to imperfect beings at Yale. I’m terrified of an institution where life is replaceable and nature is a decoration; if tulips and dogs and squirrels are disposable props in Yale’s controlled reality—what am I? I had to have the right GPA and SAT and extracurriculars and essays to earn my spot in this world, and now I feel like I need the right internships and leadership positions and connections and experiences to justify my place here. I don’t know what happens when everyone realizes I’m falling apart.

So here’s what I hope happens to the imperfect squirrels: 

The squirrel still finds himself backed into a cage, old and imperfect, aging and weary, lost and afraid. 

But he looks up in fear at a man with kind eyes and gentle wrinkles, a man who knows what it is to be unfree and would spare any living thing that pain. 

I want that man to tell the squirrel, “friend, you do not even know what it is to live.” 

I want him to put the squirrel in the back of his truck and drive him to some orange Connecticut forest, I want him to let the squirrel out into a world with snails and dew and craggy rocks and broken sticks and I want the squirrel to be overwhelmed by the realness of the world. 

The squirrel is too gentle too bland too soft for a world with foxes and hawks and he’s scared but somehow it is better to live in hallowed fear of a grand truth than to pace confined in a comfortable courtyard prison.

to be alive is to acknowledge your own mortality and imperfection and to hope in the eternity beyond you. it’s accepting the fact that someday your body will return to this earth, that you’ll live so many summers before you’re buried beneath the autumn leaves, that eventually you’ll fade like the flowers— but until then you’ll love the sun and the moon and the summer and winter and oh to be small and alive is brutal it’s hard it’s painful it’s scary and i really dont know what happens next but if life is perfect is it even real? i wouldnt give this up for anything. why would i feel the need to be the best, to be perfect, to be flawless, when life is so unpredictable and real? i am an imperfect little creature in a beautiful world and that is blessing enough for me 

I want the squirrel to come to Yale, but to leave having found freedom. And I want that man to drive away knowing he has done something good.