A UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FILING
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
CASE: CALDWELL(PLAINTIFF) v. SCUTTLEWIRTH(DEFENDANT)
CASE #96024
DOCUMENT TYPE: EVIDENCE
SUBMITTED BY: CATO ROGERS (ATTORNEY)
SUBMITTED ON BEHALF OF: JASON SCUTTLEWIRTH (PLAINTIFF)
DOCUMENT SUMMARY
This document presents evidence relating to the civil case relating to an alleged altercation between Mr. Jason Scuttlewirth and Mr. Ulysses Caldwell. The following pages contain emails, presented in their original format, sent from the phone and computer of Mr. Scuttlewirth during the weeks leading up to, and after, the events central to this case alleged to have taken place on December 8.
DATE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30
Email #1A
Timestamp: 6:07 p.m.
To: emma.light@thedailyletter.com
Subject: I Hit A Goose
Hey Emma,
Bad news. I probably can’t make it to dinner. Our neighborhood has a bit of a goose problem and, well, I may have hit one with my car on the way over. I’m taking it to a vet now. Are you free sometime later in the week?
- Jason
Email #1B
Timestamp: 8:15 p.m.
To: juliascuttlerwirth@gmail.com
Subject: Hope Is Not A Thing With Feathers
Julia,
Did dad ever say anything about how to take care of a geese population that’s gotten out of control? Did he drop any tips? These Canadian Geese have moved in – awful white squawking things. They get noisy and unbearably loud at night. And they’re feisty during the day.
I thought dad might have mentioned something about geese when he lectured us on bat houses and mouse traps. Let me know if that rings a bell.
Also, I have a goose in my possession which is hooked on leftover breakfast food and is now currently looking for a home. Are you interested? Do you know anyone interested?
Your brother,
Jason
Email #1C
Timestamp: 8:27 a.m.
To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com
Subject: The Geese
Dear Mr. Caldwell,
I just wanted to reach out about the geese. As our HOA President, I thought maybe you would know the protocol for getting a situation like this to a manageable level. Just let me know if there’s anything you need from me.
Cordially,
Jason
DATE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3
Email #2A
Timestamp: 1:05 p.m.
To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com
Subject: The Geese II
Dear Mr. Caldwell,
Maybe you missed my last email. Just checking in on the geese. I’ve noticed your bird baths are wrecked and overflowing. Please. Let’s take care of these monstrous fowls together.
Cordially,
Jason
DATE: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6
Email #3A
Timestamp: 10:11 p.m.
To: emma.light@thedailyletter.com
Subject: Breakfast-for-Dinner
Emma,
I had a lot of fun over the weekend. I’d love to hang out sometime this week. If, by chance, you are free tomorrow night, you could come by and meet my pet goose, Gregory. Maybe we could do breakfast-for-dinner at my place?
Yours,
Jason
Email #3B
Timestamp: 9:59 a.m.
To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com
Subject: The Geese III: The Third Part of a Trilogy We All Dreaded
Dear Mr. Caldwell,
Ok, this is just out of hand. I can’t walk my pet around without a flock scaring him back into the garage. I’m going to start finding their eggs and making omelets soon.
Cordially,
Jason
Email #3B
Timestamp: 3:47 a.m.
To: juliascuttlerwirth@gmail.com
Subject: Uh Oh
Julia,
I got into a fight with my neighbor this morning. It was a part of this whole dispute with the HOA – a long chain of correspondence back and forth about geese in the neighborhood. They’re everywhere now. Down the street. On the sidewalk. In your yard. You can’t park your car in the driveway without parting the feathered sea.
The guy lives one house over, but I didn’t want to just bang on his door. I tried to draft polite correspondence. He never answered. Just never said anything. Then, when I was walking Gregory the Goose, he asked if I had read the HOA handbook on exotic pets. Said maybe I would have to get rid of him.
Exotic pets? The most common thing in Hollowshire Row is a fucking goose. And this particular goose broke its leg when a car bumped into it. So I took it in. That’s not an exotic pet. That’s the origin story of my best friend.
And when I asked about my emails, he said he hadn’t seen anything. What a load of goose shit.
Also, Emma didn’t respond to my last message. I’m a little worried that breakfast-for-dinner was the wrong way to go with it. Or maybe I signed off wrong. Or maybe I tried to do it all in the wrong order. Who knows.
Just feels like no one’s listening.
Your brother,
Jason
DATE: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30
Email #4A
Timestamp: 9:19 a.m.
To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com
Subject: An Apology
Dear Mr. Caldwell,
Just wanted to apologize for the way the conversation went last week. I checked in the handbook – as long as I register Gregory with the state, it shouldn’t be a problem. Thanks for your patience.
Cordially,
Jason
Email #4B
Timestamp: 7:34 p.m.
To: emma.light@thedailyletter.com
Subject: Re. Dinner Tomorrow
Emma,
Yes! I’d love to go to dinner with you. 8:00 p.m. tomorrow works great.
Cordially,
Jason
Email #4C
Timestamp: 7:35 p.m.
To: juliascuttlerwirth@gmail.com
Subject: You Know What Is Up
Julia,
Kachow.
Your brother,
Jason
DATE: MONDAY, DECEMBER 4
Email #5A
Timestamp: 3:07 p.m.
To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com
Subject: Stage Five – Acceptance
Dear Mr. Caldwell,
The geese have taken over my yard now. My sunflowers don’t know which way to point. Soon I will accept these beasts’ terms of surrender.
Cordially,
Jason
DATE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8
Email #6A
Timestamp: 7:05 p.m.
To: juliascuttlerwirth@gmail.com
Subject: This Day Could Not Get Worse
Julia,
Two emails which would have, independently, made this the worst day of the year. Both come within an hour of each other. Seems I can’t catch a break.
Your brother,
Jason
Email #6B
Timestamp: 7:06 p.m.
To: emma.light@thedailyletter.com
Subject: Re. How I’m Feeling About Us
Emma,
Yea. Totally makes sense. No hard feelings. I’ll see you around.
- Jason
Email #6C
Timestamp: 8:00 p.m.
To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com
Subject: Re. A Civil Suit
Mr Caldwell,
Thank you for informing me of this case you’ve brought forward to the district court. I understand that you feel grieved by Gregory’s actions today – I know firsthand it can be scary when an angry goose gets in your face.
All the same, I would love to remind you that Gregory is, ultimately, a goose. As domesticated as he can become, he will remain as such.
And to be straightforward, I understand the stakes. If you win, Gregory will be returned to the wild. I cannot say I am surprised that the one action would choose to take the effect of adding a goose to the swarming flock plaguing our neighborhood. Suppose I’ll see you in court, Mr. Caldwell.
Squawk,
Jason
DATE: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10
Email #7A
Timestamp: 11:57 p.m.
To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com
Subject: Who I Am
Dear Mr. Caldwell,
It’s been a long night. I’ve been walking around the neighborhood, taking Gregory to all of my favorite spots around Hollowshire Row.
I imagined these might be the places I would share with special people in my life. The benches along the treeline by the lake. The koi pond on Columbus Avenue. The big tree above your yard – I like to sit against it and look at your birdbath display.
But, after three years of living here, I don’t have anyone to share those places with. Not that I’d much want to nowadays – there’s goose shit everywhere.
You read my emails and methodically filed them into your spam folder. And now you bring forward a case which could well be the end of Gregory. You would return him to the wild. Yes. You display an utter disregard for basic principles of neighborliness. But even more appalling, you bypassed our most fundamental tools for compromise.
Talking to each other is how we can become something beyond ourselves. We are unbounded. We are unrestrained by the usual confines of ourselves. We are, entirely, what we draft.
I will concede, without question, that emails and texts possess bleak origin stories. A world moving too fast for letters does not produce, through necessity, something altogether more elegant. Just something more efficient.
But everything is practical.
Bird baths, for instance. In their first iterations, ancient cities-dwellers built them to attract songbirds and woodpeckers. Now, millennia later, we see them as beautiful fountains. But their origin remains rooted in pragmatism. To me, that’s how you know they mean something. We chose to maintain them, elevate them. And not because an academic conceived of some broad aim, but because they are, like everything in our lives, a means of expression. We, the people of suburbia, shaped these items to our liking. It’s the reason we have door mats and vanity plates.
And the world is quickly producing new opportunities of expression all the time, physical and digital. I’m not sure where we’re going. But these messages, these snippets of familiar self-expression, are the backbone of human connection. They repair the shattered windows between worlds. They make up mirrors which allow us to really look at ourselves.
And maybe it’s all failed prose. But to me and the people who matter to me, they’re more than that. They're hugs. They’re consoling nods. They’re attempts, each in their own small way, to build bridges across an infinite, online space.
And they are items which can not be expressed outside of themselves, immortalized pieces of identity. And you just ignored them. You can sue me. You can try and take away Gregory. But ignoring my emails? You can not dismiss who I am.
Read it again. Show it in court. I have more to write.
But before I get to that, I am going to make pancakes for me and my goose.
Sincerely,
Jason