A writer withdraws to a hut, alone, somewhere in the forest. The area is so deserted that his girlfriend claims that the forest animals here don’t even know what humans are and think they’re crazy cows.
But the writer is forced to admit to himself that he is just as clueless as the animals are: Birds, for example, all look the same to him. He’s a city person. But since he has nothing else to do, he starts exploring the matter with the help of a bird identification app and bird food. And, sure enough, they all come fluttering along: great tits, nuthatches, bullfinches – as he is now learning to recognize and call them. And they all have very different characters: The blackcap is as daring as Tom Cruise, while nuthatches act like they’re hopped up on cocaine.
So much for not much happening in the woods! Every night at exactly the same time, a raccoon, who is pretty brazen in general, very skillfully cracks open the box of birdfeed. A single mouse makes as much noise as ten. And then there’s the giant hedgehog …
The longer the author observes these animals, discovering both the wild unknown and closely familiar in them, the more his entire perception changes, his sense of time – and even his sense of security.
