One of the many benefits of living in a building that should have been condemned a decade ago is the variety of wildlife I was able to photograph without leaving my apartment.

There’s a hole in the exterior of the building, just below this window, where these extra-large monstrosities would gather to talk about the children they had carried off that day.

Thankfully, even with the windows peeling away from their frames, and the total lack of insulation along one wall, the building wasn’t condemned… so I was able to occasionally find subjects like this one around my window sills and my kitchen table, groggy and covered in plaster dust from their travel through my wall.

…yes, thankfully the building wasn’t condemned. Or renovated. Or cared for in any way by the landlords over the eight years I lived there. Thank God none of that happened, otherwise I’d never have been able to take this photo. This shot totally makes waking up with a snow drift in my bedroom because the window couldn’t stay in place completely worth it.