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It’s a bad day when a bug flies in your mouth. Maybe you’re camping, or on a bicycle, or just momentarily minding what you thought was your own business. You hack out a cough. Then spit a bunch while a friend makes a joke about “good protein”.

It’s an intrusion, alien to the modern human experience. The gagging spitting and tongue flapping afterward represents an unwitting invasion by the insect, but gives us a good parable for the relationship we share with the animal kingdom overall. In their wildest form we do not have control nor do we completely understand their motives or actions.

And sometimes we eat them.

Every person has some corporeal association with animals. From the veterinarians and zookeepers of the world, to the other side of the spectrum where urban city dwellers rarely encounter a wild beast. There are the domesticated pet owners — dogs, cats, fish, reptiles, livestock, etc. — who care for one or sometimes a few creatures. And then there is the composite whole of humanity and its not so watchful eye over the encroachment of ecosystems and the complicit destruction of life.

The Red Flag Magazine Animal Issue hopes to carefully investigate the intricacies of the relationship between animals and people and most importantly those who are working within it. We learn from experts who focus on a particular species or habitat. More often we learn from the beasts themselves. The process of compiling this issue for Red Flag was one of growth, a natural phenomenon all animals experience.

Humanity’s collective growth has been mostly intellectual and technological. I’ve often thought that the process of humanity moving toward modernity was largely a battle against the intrusion of animals. We went from living outside, to caves, to huts, to cabins, to skyscrapers. With each of those comes a greater protection against the elements and meddling predators. A cave could be infiltrated; a hut could be attacked. Our progress also comes with hygiene, which staves off other living things such as microbes and viruses.

And during that process animals have been demonized. It’s not just Steve Spielberg’s Jaws, because we still blame rats for the bubonic plague, though a great deal of evidence suggests they were not to the culprits. Perhaps we fear greatest an enemy that is not us and truly unknown.  From Cujo to the errant cockroach on your leg, even the most squeamish will squeal in terror.

But there is solace. Truest thing, I love my dog. And most importantly, there are still moments where all we want is the reassurance that we are not alone.