Since reading material was meager, I spent a lot of time in deep thought, sitting with my back to the wall and facing the door. I would often travel thousands of miles away and stay for hours. I'd “come to,” finding that I'd been staring at one spot for so long that my one eye was sore and watery. Since my release, an author I met told me he is convinced that, if we'd known of each others existence, we could have communicated telepathically. I don't know.

One day I noticed a facial twitch below one eye. I coupled this with the fact that I'd been talking to myself and wondered if these were the beginnings of an emotional disorder. Thinking I'd better not take it too seriously, I launched into another poetic effort.

I wasn't guessing when I said my cell was five feet by eight feet. I measured it with my foot ruler. I started by marking off my five foot eight inch height on the wall. Then I proportionally divided and redivided this distance, again and again, until I felt I had something very close to one inch. I pulled a piece of straw from my bedding and marked twelve of these divisions on it. Next I measured my height I'd marked on the wall, and after a few refinements I decided I had a ruler which was accurate enough for my purposes.

I needed a calendar which would not be readily visible to anyone except me. I discovered that, including the offset which was the doorway, I had seven wall surfaces, one for each day of the week. I named the surface to the right of the door Monday, and going around the cell, each adjoining surface became the next day, until I arrived back at the left side of the door with Sunday. But I lacked a marker.

My opportunity came the day the man installed the stove pipe through my cell. After uncovering the holes located high in both side walls, he placed the pipe through them. Next he mixed some plaster to fill that part of the hole not occupied by the pipe. He dropped a couple of blobs of plaster. With my foot I nudged the largest piece under my bunk and behind a support leg. Let him try to find it when he swept. He didn't, and when it dried, I had a piece of chalk. (A little more practice and I'd have made a good Roger The Dodger).

I had managed to keep track of the dates to this point, but now my calendar requirements were complete making it much easier. At my first chance during the morning routine, I'd mark the date in an inconspicuous place on the appropriate day-wall and erase the mark from the preceding one. The first letter of the current month was left on the Monday wall.

I made a tool with another piece of straw. It was for a project which didn't turn out to be such a hot idea.

Not many days after my arrival, I noticed that, now and then, sparrows would alight on a paling just outside my window. I thought I'd become a bird lover and feed them. I again turned to my toilet paper cache and tied a small piece, fashioned into the shape of a scoop, to the end of the straw. Of course, the string was from my foot bandage.

Now came the flaw in my thinking. I reasoned that I wouldn't be there when summer came, so I poked a hole in the mosquito netting.

Dumb!

Sure, with my little shovel, I could slip grains of rice onto the paling, out through the hole. But summer came, I was still there and the mosquitoes came in through the hole. The danged birds never found the rice anyhow!

Other birds caught my eye, or rather, my ear. I would hear whistling sounds, which seemed to be moving through the air. I guessed they were birds, and began referring to them as “whistling ducks.” Then one day I caught sight of one. It was a pigeon with a box fixed to its back. Whadaya know! Birds carrying their suitcases with them.

Years later I learned that the boxes whistled as air passed through them. They were fixed to the backs of the pigeons to frighten sparrows, since the sparrows had become very numerous and were eating the farmers' seeds. I never read how well this device worked on the sparrows, but I wonder how long it took before the pigeon went crazy, having this whistle follow him all over the place until he finally decided to rid himself of it once and for all by flying into a stone wall.

I seem to recall reading about another war on a sector of nature which was decreed by the Chinese leaders, which went totally awry. Whatever it was, the battle succeeded so well that the “target” was almost wiped out. However, it was belatedly learned that the object of the destruction was responsible for holding in check another of natures pests which then multiplied in such numbers that an even greater problem existed than before.

Don't fool with Mother Nature!