In the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown almost nothing in my life made sense. The only thing that contained any meaning, as the rest of life’s routines fell aside, was walking down to Toronto’s Marilyn Bell Park after midnight and sitting quietly with Lake Ontario. The wildlife there soon seemed to get used to me. I learned to stay completely still and quiet. With no other people around, I was fortunate enough to witness nature scenes that would rival any episode of the TV show Planet Earth. My most treasured memory is of watching the raccoons walk silently to the edge of the water and use their hands to catch crayfish. I was a visitor in that place, but not a part of it — a conditional interloper. If I stayed quiet, the wildlife around me would go about their business. I learned through subsequent research that many of the crayfish in Lake Ontario have been inadvertently introduced from other areas through human activity. They are considered “invasive.” Some people have also been painted as “invasive,” or even likened to pests. I wonder where the viewers’ sympathy lies as they gaze upon this painting. Are you more charitable to the raccoon if I tell you that the crayfish is an uninvited guest? Would the raccoon here seem to you like a more majestic or acceptable creature than the ones you see at night dining in municipal dumpsters? This remembered place, where I sit and watch the raccoons and crayfish, only exists at night and only under my observation. If I wasn’t there at all, who could say if this scene plays out? But if I stand too close, I would spook the wildlife and there’d be nothing to see. This painting, then, lives in the balance between “not there” and “too there,” and so must I.