Why fear us.

Animals and creatures aren’t scared of humans.

They’re intrigued by them.

They want to get closer to them, camp nearby, cross their floor, follow their route, sample their food, get to know their lifestyle, become part of their habits, benefit from their routines, live their lifestyle, fly round their moons, wake up to their morning, and come out when their halogen sun extinguishes, like a burnt match, and we are finally safe, we can relax, we can come out of hiding, whisper then talk, even laugh, and run around, we can feel free, we can explore, we can burn off some calories and fall happily into exhaustion, and snooze in the gentle darkness, and in the distance we hear you snore, a distant slow thunder, miles from home, but a storm brewing, counting your breaths, a mile away for every seconds exhale, between the lightning of every sharp forked intake, we watch them with our senses, they buzz for us, fascinate us, make us wonder what they are, what they think, where they are going.

What do theses humans want? What life is this that smells so sweet, that is flesh, and blood, and sweat, and warm fluid air, oozing moisture, wet with saliva, a mountain of meat, refreshments, nutrition, life, calories, energy, a generator, pumping fuel, growing then receding with each revolution of its engine, this heroic heart, adrenalin sparking off each cell as their chemistry and oils ignite, fed by dreams and imagination, a mental world of pictures and puzzles, memories& orders, flowing in and out of sleep with each other, day after night, consciousness after unconsciousness, this lucid mix of the two coexisting, love and hate, passion and apathy, intrigue and fear, all overwhelming and underwhelming their senses, their feelers, the reality they see, the everyday lives of action and movement and going here, going there, doing this, doing that, a billion at once in a storm of activity, crammed together in transport, unleashed into tall tubed buildings, worrying about coffee breaks, and what they’re going to eat for lunch.

The flipside of their dreams just don’t seep in, they forget them in the daylight, they are scared of their dreams, dismiss them, make them comic, ridicule them, call them rude words like ‘art’, but at night time in the dark they are fantasizing and flipping through their history and their icons, and feeling horny in their imagination, like they have done enough, like they can celebrate their days work, and feel safe enough to relax, to snooze, to unwind, to be at peace, to intoxicate themselves with drugs and alcohol, sweet poisons that let them become that person they wish they were, the one in their heads, the one they wanted to be at school, when they were a child, when the sun shone, and nothing mattered but tea time, when you could wish for and receive your dreams handed to you, wrapped in shiny paper, disguised in fairytales, in its own beautiful religion, that time in your life when you felt protected and wide eyed enough to want to look for fun, to find adventure in the everyday, the cupboards and draws, the windowsills and downstairs, the hallway between the bedrooms, the creek of each floor board, the distance jump between the mats, long medium or short, the gardens hideouts, the stones and earth, our forefathers and the plants, the animals and creatures underneath everything, the cuts and scratches, the falls and tumbles, the trees, the branches, the climbing, the swinging from branch to branch, finding the next foothold, risking that leap to get higher, up to the sky, these projections flicker through the human mind like flames, sparking ignition, shutting down the guard, drawing them into restfulness in the guise of their true selves, their inner child, imagination, a fluid wave of nostalgia bristling through them, oozing through their veins, making them want to live, to have to live internally, physiologically, to live whether they like it or not, a death sentence of life, sucking in, spewing out, keeping time, rhythm, sync, processor speed, wave, pulse, bomb, hfff, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeer, bomb, hfff, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeer, slow and constant like a breakbeat, so alive their bodies pronounce their aliveness at volume, audible from a distance, lost within their own mortal rhythm, and that is what a human is like, that’s what we find so engaging, it’s this big huge thing that is incredible, too good to be true, a new world of possibilities, and we want to either be saved by them or eat them to the bone, they’re the brightest thing we’ve ever seen, and there’s something about them that suggests better times, maybe their example could lead us somewhere, so we’ll follow, and if they trip we’ll bite them, and if they fall it’s dinner time, but let’s see what happens, so we get in their bed, sample their leftovers, let them bring food to us, feed off their warmth, their salt, their warm updraft of exhaled air and body heat, and d’you think we’d be so stupid as to get caught? Without first realizing and weighing up the dangers? Of course we get caught, that’s inevitable, there are so many more of us than you humans, we are everywhere, it is you who are in herds, gripped by your fears, huddling in concrete fortresses, we are free, we go where we want, we occupy nature, the nocturnal, the mystical, the inbetweens, the oceans, the grey areas, the green belts, the gardens, the gutters, the corridors, the ledges on the skirting boards, the space between your sheets, the creases between your clothes, the wrinkles of your skin, the space between your pores, we are in your blood, we are bacteria, we are viral, we are your malfunction, we battle your red blood cells ceaselessly, and always win eventually, we are part of you, we are more than you, we disperse you.

And you fear us.

You this huge great big thing that can destroy entire countries, and circumnavigate the entire world by air, sea & land, and travel into space to the moon and back, and to the bottom of the deepest known ocean, you fear us, these tiny little things, you scorn our microscopic size, our intrusion into your orderliness, our reminder that you are animal, that you are like us, unclean, untidy, foraging for food and opportunity.

You see us and want us dead, by spray or trap, rolled up magazine, or ultra violet insectocution.

Animal and creatures are not part of your lifestyle, your daytime, your conscience, they remind you of the darkness, of your history, your generations past, and everything you have struggled beyond, that you have outlived and survived, that you have battled to overcome, to dominate, to eradicate, to tidy away, to remove from your list of known problems, cured and eliminated by antibiotics.

But your medicine stimulates us, stimulates our nerve endings, gets us all defensive and fractious, makes us want to survive and regroup, to come back for more, to see what it is that you are protecting, to see if you’re hard enough to win the war rather than just some small battle, whether you can play the long game, keep your defences up, watch your back, hear our quiet shoes coming for you, from behind, in the darkness, when you least expect it, not quite on the right foot to make the detour, make that defensive move, relive those Bruce Lee sequences in your head, but when it comes, it’ll come from nowhere and you’ll kick yourself for not foreseeing it, losing your street cred, allowing yourself to become the victim, to feel yourself be beaten and humiliated, to be overcome by something greater than yourself.

Your own flesh and blood, hunting you, staking you out, setting you traps, seeing how easily you fall into them, seeking out your habits and weaknesses.

Animals are just like you, but better at living and staying alive.

We get you in the end and we love you.

You eat us. We eat you.

It’s all give and take.

We’re everywhere and everything, just the same chemicals and energy that you are, reacting with you, rotating in your orbit, rotating within ours.

Words by Professor Julian Roberts