For all these reasons, I far prefer animals. At least with them you know where you stand. Some even have better hygiene than humans. And with animals, no matter what happens to them, the only way they can give you an opinion is with a display of raw emotion. You’ll never know if something happened to your animal unless it’s struck by a feeling of raw terror. So I’ve begun getting up at the crack of dawn, especially in summer when the sun rises early. Where I live, light starts creeping over the horizon around three in the morning in mid-June. The few people who do cross your path are too sleepy or intoxicated to care what you’re up to at such an ungodly hour. Outside of the city all you hear are the sounds of nature: birds, the wind, insects, rain. I can sometimes imagine that I’m all alone in the world.

It’s an old habit, going all the way back to my childhood when I was first old enough to unlock the front door on my own. On weekend mornings my parents stay in bed, on principle. Even if they actually wake up at the same time as during the week, sleeping in is a sacred ritual, and they stay in their room until mid-morning. That’s why, all through childhood, most of my Saturday morning expeditions went unnoticed. When I did get “caught,” I was all innocence: riding my trike in the driveway, watching snails in the garden, oh, and that one aborted mission when they caught me in the midst of preparations, stuffing cookies into my little backpack. I always bring cookies. Still one of my favourite provisions.

I discovered that an effective trick to avoid getting caught was to turn the TV to the kids’ channel. The hard part was finding the right volume. Since it was usually too early for me to be up, it had to be quiet enough not to wake up my parents, but loud enough for them to hear once they did wake up. The perfect level, on our old grey Hitachi, was six green bars out of fifteen. There was always the risk of failing to turn the volume down in time, since my dad liked to watch sports at full blast, and the previous setting would be stored when I turned the TV back on the next day. The solution was to smother the TV speakers with a cushion while I made the adjustment. Later, when I had the excuse of being a teenager, since all teenagers like to sleep in, I would sneak back in through my window around 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. If I went out at 3:00 a.m., that left six hours for my unsupervised outing. Leave nothing to chance, minimize risk, create optimal conditions: just as I always brought cookies with me, I always followed these ground rules.