How to Snare a Photo

I had a brilliant idea.

Okay. It wasn’t brilliant, it was different.

I would pin up my own calendar photo each month. I would pin it up on the door of our condo.

I would customize each photo with its own title and with the date and place where it was snapped.

I often have brilliant ideas like that.

Okay. Not brilliant. Just different.

I ran out to Michael’s and purchased photo frames and hanging wire. I sorted through the hundreds of frames on offer and finally found some that I could attach a wire to.

I sorted through the dozens of hanging wire packages and found one.

One.

They offered one kind of hanging wire.

I bought the wire.

It turned out that it would take a Louis Cyr to bend the wire and a Harry Houdini to tie a knot in it.

Who is Louis Cyr? Who is Harry Houdini?

It doesn’t matter. Focus on the problem here.

Then I had another brilliant idea.

Okay . . . You know the drill now.

I ran over to Canadian Tire. I knew exactly the kind of wire I was looking for. It was wire that I had used as a kid some seventy odd years ago.

It was snare wire.

Now, Canadian Tire was established 94 years ago. Surely it still had snare wire in stock.

I had used snare wire as a kid to fashion  ̶  what else? – snares.

Snares. To trap rabbits.

Snares are set on rabbit runs in the woods. As a kid, I had visions of trapping a whole slew of rabbits and making a rabbit-skin robe or maybe one rabbit to make a watch fob. To make a lucky foot.

I was under the impression that Robinson Crusoe or maybe Hiawatha would approve my project.

As a kid, I overlooked what a cruel death I would subject a rabbit to and how messy and smelly and labour-intensive making a rabbit-skin robe would be, and once I had a rabbit-skin robe, how I would convince my mom that it was superior to a woolen camp blanket and was a cinch to wash.

Just my luck, though.

I never caught a rabbit.

Not one.

Lucky rabbit.

So, at Canadian Tire I accosted the first sales associate I saw and I asked, Where do I find snare wire? And he responded, Just follow me, sir, and I followed him into the bowels of the store and he stopped at a whole rack of wires that were labelled snare wire and I could scarcely believe my eyes.

I said, Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you by any chance a trapper? And he said, Yes, I am, which confirmed my impression that he had some Aboriginal genes and I said, Thanks a lot, and he responded, It’s my pleasure, buddy.

Back home, I fashioned a hanging wire for the frame, and my calendar photo for November has now been unveiled for all passers-by to gaze upon.

There are eight condos on our floor.

Surely someone will notice it.

That would be brilliant.