Do any of you also have little animal pals?

[Rosaria Delacroix]

No, not pets- I specifically mean just random wild animals- perhaps some bunnies that live in your yard, pigeons you see often on a commute: a fat little campus squirrel, perhaps?

I've always enjoyed taming down birds. I generally steer clear of involving food, or trying to handle them, though- as it isn't great for them to become overly reliant on people for that sort of thing. I've made exceptions in the past when it came to an already basically domesticated flock of pigeons (kept by a church), and once when I was much younger, and didn't know any better yet- (at least they enjoyed the stale bread.)

Pigeons are among the easiest creatures to become friends with: they're just super sweet, docile, and generally unafraid of people, at least the ones that I've encountered in the city. During my undergraduate, I would run into flocks repeatedly on my commute- and a slow tread, calm quiet, and demonstrating you weren't a threat was all it really took to have a few become friendly enough to snuggle up against your leg during a brisk winter wind, follow me onto transit of his own accord, and one very notable occasion: bring me a piece of costume jewellery he had presumably plucked up off of the street. (That one was more of a rescue mission, he had it stuck to his foot awkwardly, but I did indeed keep the prize afterwards- he was very clever, managed to find his way up to our apartment: animals are usually getting in, due to the doors sometimes not shutting fully- but it was quite the trek for a little guy. Flight, I suppose?)

I used to help a priest that I knew to catch and hold the pigeons of his flock, in order to help free their toes from bits of string and hair that snarled up around and threatened to amputate them if left unchecked. I've also held a crow before, and had one hop up onto my sneaker and try to figure out how to steal my shoelace. I also had a small sparrow try to climb into my backpack while studying late at night, though we eventually got him back out the same window that he came in through.

Anyway, I just love befriending little wild animals like that- it's always a burst of delight to recognize a particularly patterned pigeon on your walk up to the apartment, or to smile when you see the same nesting pair snuggled up near the church's roofs. They are god awful at actually making nests, but they get all cute and poofy and wobble around together on the ground when it's chilly out, so it makes up for it, haha.

[drmollytov]

Years ago, there was a black squirrel with a distinctive red tail who regularly showed up on our back deck. I called him "Rufus" (for the tail). He would hang out with us as long as we didn't get too close to him. I even caught him once giving serious thought to entering the kitchen through the open back door. I miss him.

[Eunice]

I live in the country, so we have lots of animals around here. We have two cats of our own, but we also feed five feral cats. There's a badger who likes to visit to see if the cats have left anything. Rabbits in the field behind our house, lots of squirrels, and we feed lots of birds.