IT WAS A close encounter with an owl in the alley and a lizard living behind the workbench in our garage that opened my eyes to the creatures around us. We humans think the world is ours, but we're living in the middle of animal territory. We just don't pay much attention to them until they do damage. From insects too small to see to a coyote I spotted slinking away with a rabbit in its mouth, we're coexisting within a kingdom of creatures.

All too often we view this sharing of space, this glimpse into other and older realities, as a negative thing rather than a wondrous one. Especially when rats invade the crawlspace, deer devour the trees, or birds make off with the raspberries. It's not exactly a peaceable realm out there. Owls can be aggressive, coyotes prey on pet cats, crows gather in murders large enough to darken the sky. And raccoons, those masked bandits, are an urban menace despite their appealing looks.

We could take the long view that lawn-molesting moles and their wild friends have been put on Earth to save gardeners from perfectionism. But that view is so human-centric as to be laughable. The creatures are simply living out their lives, as we are.

I'm still enchanted by that swoop of owl wing and the repose in the lizard's nonblinking, reptilian eye. I can't get over the greyhound-like grace of the coyote, so lean he was nothing more than a slip of gray silhouette in the twilight.

"I enjoy watching the critters," says Russell Link, wildlife biologist with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, and author of "Living With Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest" (University of Washington Press, $28.95).

Link practices tolerance for the creatures that inhabit his property on Whidbey Island. Whenever possible, he prevents problems by providing alternatives to home invasion, like the nest boxes for flying squirrels that dot his landscape. But he also sets boundaries.

"I don't want wildlife in the house, not in the crawlspace, walls or attic," says Link, who recently ousted a family of river otters from under his house. "That was a crazy story, but it had a happy ending," he says. He traps rats and the voles that eat his beets, and is trying to figure out how Douglas squirrels keep getting into the attic.

I've always admired Link's book for its humane and practical approach to the problems that inevitably occur when humans and animals cross paths. Link stresses that animal populations go up and down depending on weather, viruses and other diseases. "We get lots of woodpecker questions in the spring and calls about bear in the fall," he says. All year he hears about raccoons, deer and coyotes. Link keeps the information in his book updated on the Department of Fish and Wildlife website, where you can read about how to deal with critters from snakes to cougars: http://wdfw.wa.gov/living .

Deer and rabbit predation are the two problems gardeners complain about most. How does Link deal with these hungry nuisances in his own garden? He surrounds his vegetable and fruit gardens with a 6-foot deer fence. The rest of his property is planted in deer-resistant, or "close-to-it" plants so he isn't constantly fighting a losing battle. Keeping rabbits out of the lettuce is a little trickier. To this end, Link has doubled up the bottom 30 inches of his deer fence with a layer of chicken wire, skirting out the bottom so they can't get under or through it. "Rabbits are persistent," he admits.

But Link reminds us that various species of wildlife have thoroughly adapted to urban and suburban settings. "It's their home," he says simply.

Living alongside them gives us a chance to observe animals in their natural environment. Just remember the next time you see a Peregrine falcon hunting a starling, or a squirrel gathering food for winter, that you're seeing animals in a habitat that's as much abode to them as it is to us.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "The New Low-Maintenance Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.