What are ‘outsider animals’? Accord-ing to Marlene Zuk, they are creatures that ‘live on the margins of our lives, sometimes obvious and sometimes not. When you see them, you don’t necessarily move to get rid of them … Instead, you ask, “What are you doing here?”’ They may make use of our food and our buildings, our way of living might encourage them, but they don’t need us to survive. They cannot easily be categorised into good or bad, but they are certainly disliked by many.

Zuk divides the animals in this breezily written, very readable book into ‘clever opportunists’ (raccoons and gulls); animals that can be seen as ‘invaders, intruders or visitors’ (cowbirds, common mynas and cabbage white butterflies); those that are ‘much more than pests’ (rats and cockroaches); and those that offer a ‘conduit to the wild’ (snakes and coyotes). As is obvious from that list, the book is written from an American perspective (Zuk is a professor at the University of Minnesota). An equivalent English list would drop the raccoons, cowbirds, mynas and coyotes and replace them with urban foxes, perhaps – certainly with grey squirrels, maybe the muntjac and other small deer that are turning up in our towns and gardens. As a butterfly man, I don’t think the ‘cabbage white’ should be on either list, but I was pleased to learn that this adaptable species has been found to suffer no ill effects from roadside pollutants – lead, zinc, sodium from gritting salt.

Raccoons divide opinion: some see them as bandit-masked evil geniuses, others as cute critters. They owe their success to their adaptability and flexibility, but also to their curiosity, their attraction to new things and their dexterous paws. Gulls, Zuk declares, are ‘loyal, friendly, cheerful, brave and clean’ (part of her