Creatures in Our House

     One morning at the end of October, 2016, a Carolina wren flew into our bedroom by a window I opened a crack to cool the room and freshen its air here in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  Apparently, the wren squeezed through that crack to find a sheltered home for the winter, as that species of wren does.  But realizing its mistake, the wren flew around the room a few times, seemingly in a panic, and quickly exited by the same window I opened fully.  That wren caused me to remember other critters on the outside of our house, and in it, over the years.  Those creatures have been our closest neighbors.
     Several years ago, another Carolina wren got in the house by the same window (you would think I would have learned a lesson) and was chased all over the house by our Jack Russell terror (terrier).  The poor bird finally exited by an open door.
     Early in spring, during the last few years, we hear scratching on the outside of our two upstairs, window air conditioners.  That noise is made by several house sparrows on one conditioner and a pair of mourning doves on the other.  Both species are looking for sheltered nesting sites.  The sparrows chirp excitedly on their conditioner and the doves coo from theirs.
     One summer, we had a flowering geranium plant in a pot hanging on our front porch where rain could reach it.  Japanese beetles chewed the leaves off that plant, while a pair of mourning doves raised two young on that pot and the geranium grew back from its roots.
     A few other kinds of birds used our house at times over the years.  For the last few years, a pair of Carolina chickadees regularly enter an old dryer vent for the night, as they would a tree hollow.  At least twice, a pair of house finches built a nest and attempted to rear offspring on supports on our two awnings, one over the side door and the other above the back door.  One June day a male wood thrush sang on a red-twigged dogwood bush just inches from a living room window where I was sitting.  What a lovely concert of flute music from my own Central American ambassador.  Mallard ducks sometimes perch on our roof and gray catbirds have popped through the latticework under our deck, probably in search of a sheltered nesting spot there.  And one evening early in June, three recently fledged screech owls perched several minutes on three posts of our front porch railing.  
     We've had a few species of common mammals in or on our house over the years, including gray squirrels, a couple of little brown bats, house mice and deer mice.  The squirrels are characters, and entertaining.  They come on our porch and deck and scratch through potting soil in flower pots, either to bury nuts or to search for food.  Once a squirrel ripped out cushion stuffing from a porch chair, presumably to line her nursery.  And every autumn, grays take decorative Indian corn off our porch.
     We've had a couple of little brown bats in the house at different times.  One bat frightened everybody as it circled a bedroom in the middle of the night, searching for a way out of the house.  I went into the bedroom, shut the door and opened a window wide.  The next morning the bat was gone, much to our relief.
     We have had house mice and deer mice in our house at the start of some winters.  The best way to eliminate these little critters from the house is to live trap them and release them some distance from the house.
     Cottontail rabbits have had nests of young against our house at least a few times over the years.  And at least one adult cottontail lives under our deck during each day the year around.
     Several kinds of insects have been in the house, on our porch or on our deck over the years.  House flies and a kind of tiny ant are in the house every summer.  Fireflies that landed on us just before we came indoors fly slowly around the house, flashing their cold, abdominal lights, which I think is kind of neat.  Once we had a colony of yellow jackets in the basement, with an entrance through a wall to the outside.  Late that fall, however, the workers died and the queen buried herself somewhere in the soil of our yard, as all her kind do.  We never had that species in the house again.
     Big, black and yellow, female carpenter bees chewed round holes in the bottoms of our old, wooden porch railings, weakening those structures to the point they were finally removed.  There the bees raised larvae on flower nectar and pollen until they pupated and emerged as adults.
     All day, most every day during the summer of 2015, several honey bees landed on the damp potting soil of potted plants on our deck.  I think they were there to ingest moisture from that soil, or maybe they were consuming certain minerals from it.
     We have had several kinds of close animal neighbors at home over the years.  And everyone of them has made our lives richer.  Readers, too, can enjoy animal neighbors just by keeping a watch for them and tolerating their presence if you can.