What I Want the Animals in My Home to Know

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Published 6:30, DECEMBER 16, 2025

THERE ARE SO many ways in. Doors, four in all, and only one with a screen. Windows, a total of fifteen, most of their screens torn, bent, or missing. Seams yawning between brick and roof, chimney tops never properly capped, rotting fascia and a crumbling foundation: basement to attic, floorboard to ceiling, our home is porous. Until we renovated it, an attached garage had an off-kilter barn door, an uneven concrete floor, powdery brick. Not hard to gain entry there either.

I like open windows and doors. They welcome light unreservedly. They grant wind and rain, hail and snow, fair passage. Open doors and windows make me appear more friendly than I am and less isolated than I feel. The truth is, I am all that I think about most of the time and cannot decide if this is pathetic or purposeful—or both. Ask me again tomorrow: I’ll be thinking about it—me—still.

Mosquitos and wasps enter the house on occasion and must die for their mistake. But spiders in corners of sticky webbing, centipedes cruising drains, fruit flies, black flies and moths, carpenter ants, pharaoh ants, beetles and gnats, all live comfortably within these walls. They are here right now; they have been here for generations. Such creatures may call the structure field and forest, town and district. They may call it kingdom and known universe. Who are we to dispute their understandings of spaces? Don’t we also dwell in dusk and muck, in drains and cobwebs and basement corners, assuring ourselves, like children playing on a beach, that every sandcastle we construct is a cathedral, every sand hill the Himalayas?

Anyway, it is the animals I am curious about. Better: I am curious about their apparent curiosity with our lives. To them, we must be jarring noises and putrid smells, strange shadows, blockages of light. Why would our burrows, our caves, our—speaking plainly—minimum-security facilities, be of any interest? A global health crisis has not granted us more substance or appeal. Better neighbours we suddenly are not.

I won’t say the animals are encircling the house. That is too military, hinting of strategy rooted in subterfuge, a prelude to invasion and overthrow, folks needing to be killed and earth scorched. To say such a thing, foresee such a bloody drama, would be to confuse pathologies. It would be to still be thinking mostly about myself and my kind.

BEGIN WITH THE birds. How abundant they are these days, colours radiant and calls amplified. A half dozen varieties are present in our yard, all common. Bruising, helmet-headed blue jays rule the roost. They flutter onto the tops of fences and splash into puddles. They stomp about, truncheons slapped into palms for effect. Other birds keep their distance of them. Fixating on the metallic blue and sensing the innate aggression, I keep my distance too.

Darting cardinals abort landings at the mere sight of a jay. A cardinal glimpsing, in contrast, lifts spirits. This past summer a couple decided to nest in a bush off our front porch. My wife and I—also a couple, although we made our babies long ago—positioned chairs on the porch, as if at an outdoor theatre, to watch them flash from tree to bush to tree, delivering their payloads, building their house.

So fleet are these birds that we can’t be sure if one has passed before our eyes, lightning streaks across our retinas, or if we still carry the visual memory of a previous red-orange disruption. Cardinals have no time to waste. Or have they no time at all? They seem in perpetual haste. Or do they never hurry any (non) minute of any (non) day? Sitting on our porch, our own suspended days spooling out in long minutes, with much identified time ahead to negotiate, we wonder about this.

But cardinals are also flying into a window in our family room. The birds steer headlong into the glass, smack it hard, and then drop below. I’ve heard the thwump, the sound of a snare drum muffled with a towel, and witnessed the glass darken into distressed colour. On reaching the window, the ground outside has been cleared, and the cardinal—a male who has mistaken his reflection for a rival, according to a Google search—is back on a branch, shaking it off.

Humble robins never fly into our window glass. They are not so speed besotted and seem to lack pressing tasks. Robins mostly chill on the front lawn. They roll in the grass beneath the hot sun, favouring patches of dry, dusty earth where worms dwell, feathers filthy but clearly not caring.

Doves too are regulars on the lawn, often lolling alongside the robins. Only when their cooing separates out from the clangour do I notice these birds. This, despite their plumage, which is elegant, eggshell yellows and greys. And yet, doves bring universal messages of enduring love and hope beyond the current strife. White ones also represent peace—the longed-for, lasting kind. All this I remember from attending mass as a child and gazing at the images sewn into priestly garments and set in stained glass.

Crows show up in the yard as well. Often confused with ravens, crows get, I know, a bad rap—augurs of ill omens, death on two wings. It doesn’t help that their bills, feathers, legs, and feet are iridescent black. Nor that their calls, caw–caw–caw, can shatter a sunrise and crash a sunset. The same applies to their diet, which occasionally features small animals, carrion, and nesting eggs. Also, their insolent expressions and the clear fear they evoke in fellow birds.

How unlikable are crows? Almost as much as we are. And do crows, in turn, create lore about humans? Our guttural cries and distorted expressions, carnivore diets, including nesting eggs, and smug, punchable faces? Are we death on two legs to them, never mind to the other creatures in the yard? We did once wage battle to prevent starlings from nesting in the old garage. Over a period of weeks, we blocked likely spots, hung coils of aluminum foil from rafters, blared music day and night. The birds still nested, and for a month, the garage was theirs, noisily defended. Then they left.

By the following spring, the garage had been renovated, all bird access now denied. From the adjacent courtyard, we watched the starlings search for a familiar point of entry. They fluttered and flapped from tree branch to trough, deck chair to fence top. They squawked and chirped and trilled. At times the birds seemed to scream in frustration at us, and for a period our garage and courtyard were heavy with their upset. But then they too moved on—not without cursing our species, I bet.

There we sit on warm evenings, craning our necks to track the avian air show and raising our voices over the parliament of fowls. Blue jays, cardinals, robins, finches, sparrows, doves, starlings, crows higher up in the trees—bird life around and above our house thrives and multiplies. They gather and consort and keep each other boisterous company. They move about like free citizens of a free state. What has abruptly become the most perilous of human activities—the singing of love and praise for the planet—remains their daily song, sanctioned by light and cloud, clear air that carries, for them, no contagion. Lifted off the blighted earth, there are no restrictions or protocols, no two metres of separation or limits on social gatherings, even with your lonely mother. No hand sanitizer. No masks to block the spread of viral voices.

Their freedom must be our freedom, lived by proxy, their throaty songs our mute prayers.

Aside from the nestling starlings and one confused sparrow, birds have kept to the outside. Animals, on the other hand, can’t resist transoms. Start with the mice. Like memories, mice are already inside the walls and always have been. In fairness, they hope to pass unnoticed. Switch on a kitchen light at two in the morning and watch one scurry across a counter? Witness a death spasm on the basement floor? Whoops—we weren’t supposed to see any of that.

Warned that mice droppings are toxic, I trapped and killed a few in early pandemic days. The hunt was traumatizing. I lay awake hearing the peanut butter–laced guillotines snap and the tiny cries ring out. In the mornings, I’d swing open the doors beneath the kitchen sink with a flinch, ready for the worst. Most traps, including those sprung and licked clean of the bait, were empty. But I did find bodies, sometimes swiftly killed, sometimes in smears of blood. One or two still twitched.

I learned this: I am a cowardly killer and a hypocrite consumer of anything that once had a heartbeat. As well, mice have bright dark eyes and luxuriant whiskers, trim coats, and dainty feet. They die with shy smiles on their faces and do indeed resemble bachelor uncles who are overly fond of tweed. Only a sociopath could wish one harm and, anyway, their droppings are easy to spot and sweep up.

I quit trapping mice.

Of course, cats would have done this wet work for pleasure. But we no longer keep assassins-in-residence. Neighbourhood cats patrol our property each day, giving one another wide, wary berths but often stopping before an open door to peer inside. A lean grey tabby has stepped through the studio doors repeatedly. On seeing me at my desk, she has frozen and then literally backpedalled, eyes locked on mine, a gunfighter ready to draw.

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Dogs likewise sniff the perimeter. Everyone owns a dog now. Friends who dare to visit us often bring their pooches, the way they used to bring their children. Dogs and kids are equally cheerful presences, knocking stuff over and muddying carpets, stealing food and then apologizing with goofy grins.

Squirrels too are already within the walls and ceilings and up in the attic. They use the eavestrough thirty feet off the ground as a running track. Grey and black squirrels dash across the front porch to store winter foods in flowerpots, deadheading geraniums and flinging soil. They perform Cirque du Soleil along the electrical wires above the driveway. When carrying a load, they sometimes wobble and lose their footing, dropping nuts. I look away when a squirrel is crossing a wire overhead, not wishing to jinx it. Once, I had to shovel up and bag a daredevil who died trying. But that outcome is as rare as an adult human smile masking no strategy or hesitation.

Having access to canopy pathways, squirrels don’t fret earthbound traffic much. Chipmunks, in contrast, confined to the understory, are more alert, especially to us. Several times one summer, a chipmunk stood on its hind legs in the open doorway to my studio, looking this way and that, paws ready for a manicure. If I moved just a finger, it chirped and fled, quick as sunlight vacating a window frame. But if I kept statue still, the chipmunk would drop to all fours and enter, exploring the interior one sniff and darting step, sniff and darting step, at a time. The concrete floor, painted a shiny grey, confused or maybe intrigued the creature. Was the floor suddenly the sky, bright behind cloud cover, and the chipmunk, usually so terrestrial, suddenly, mysteriously, of that sphere instead—the great lifting, the pure fire? On an especially sunny morning, the studio aglow, the chipmunk, already halfway across the room, became disoriented. Instead of retreating, it headed down a hallway leading deeper into the house.

“Go out the way you came in,” I advised.

With the floor in clouds and the ceiling the ash of dusty earth, I bet my booming voice—a Hollywood voice-over God spewing threats—further convinced the chipmunk that its world had turned topsy-turvy. Up had indeed become down and day was night. Dark might never be light again. Plus, there were monsters in this terrible place! The chipmunk froze on the spot, chirpless and quaking, until I scared it back out the same way it had come in—just like the rest of us.

Finally, the rabbits. Grey-brown cottontails are daily visitors on the lawn, usually alone and absorbed in a task, but they rarely venture near the house. Even so, I’ve lingered inside dreams where rabbits cover every inch of the porch and courtyard and peer through our too many windows. When I open a door in welcome, as I always do in the dream, they tumble in, tumbling and stumbling, concert goers rushing a stage. A hushed stampede, the rabbits pitter-patter over our hardwood floors and across our rugs, hop onto chairs and tables, counters and stovetops. They groom and shake, scratch, sniff and yawn, ears pinned and noses twitching. They nip one another in play and run in circles around chairs. The animals leap, not high, twisting and kicking while briefly airborne. Called binkies, these leaps are indicators of charged spirits and rabbity good times. Three rabbits can squeeze side by side on the steps to the second floor, like pairs of shoes lined up in a closet, and a dozen lounge comfortably on each duvet in each bedroom, digging and chewing and sneezing, the sound closer to a honk. As serene and self-involved as always, the creatures say nothing and want nothing. Truth be told, they appear not to notice that we too are in those beds, on those stairs, at that kitchen table.

Which probably means that, in my dream at least, the house isn’t our home and we aren’t here anymore. That it is done, once and for all. What is “it” and why is its passing worthy of a collective, high-kicking binkie?

The reign of human terror. The age of us.

I f animals or even birds did come into our house, and we could communicate across the thresholds, here are five things I would want them to know.

• My wife and I have altered our diet. We’ve taken a different direction in what we eat.

• We are lonely and sometimes sad. Our children are grown and gone, and there is too little of us to ensure enough mutual company. We have plenty of space to share, and are welcoming in our awkward, unsettling way.

• Six months into the pandemic, we switched from keeping the bad news on television as our background hum to rotating through nature documentaries. The images in these films rarely show human activity. No city canyons or suburban deserts, tunnels, bridges or dams, mining pits or belching smokestacks. Even our faces, attractive and well-intentioned in isolation, or perhaps in small numbers, are cut out—the better, it seems, to foresee a planet thriving into the future.

• Barring a conflagration, this house will long outlast any memory, never mind actual record, of its current occupants. Do I know who slept in our bedroom and cooked in our kitchen a century, a half century, or just twenty years ago? Who made love in the bedrooms and hosted holiday feasts in the dining room, played board games in the family room with their kids; who fought and shouted and said the other was ruining their life, split up and were reunited, battled depression and despair but came through, if barely; do I know who may have died in this very room where I type on this keyboard, died of illness or sadness, taken by age or neglect or, most human of all, their own hand; and who, frail and worn, alone and abandoned, prayed for salvation, for reunion, simply for small mercies, to . . . whom? God? David Attenborough? As likely, these precursors to my wife and I sought mercy from, and perhaps reunion with, the same stone deities and plaster Buddhas that we do: the cardinals in the bushes and starlings in the garage, the squirrels in the attic and rabbits in the garden.

• I’ve debated buying security cameras for the front and side doors. As a precaution. In case things get . . . you know . . . worse. Always I have assumed the footage would capture further animal movement, especially the presence of those typically nocturnal creatures—raccoons, foxes, coyotes—we’ve yet to lay eyes on but assume are also out there. My hesitation about installing security cameras, I’ve lately decided, isn’t because I don’t want a more accurate count of the bustle unfolding on our property. It is from a concern about the footage of us entering and exiting the home we’ve built for ourselves over the long years of our short lives. My fear is that my wife and I won’t show up on the cameras. No faces, no bodies, no outlines framed by light. Not even a stirring of the air. The doors would open for a moment, and then would close, but there would be no one, nothing, crossing those transoms. “Wait!” we would say. “Wait one second. We were right there. That was us!” Then we’d fall quiet and sit very still.