Humans have always had some sort of relationship with nature. We keep certain animals as pets, and keep other animals to provide us with certain types of food. We like to live in areas surrounded by nature, as evidenced by the 46 million people living in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), which is the transition between unoccupied land and human development, such as dwellings, stores and offices. This interface isn't just vegetation but includes a host of wild animals such as squirrels, raccoons, possums, skunks and other creatures. However, as humans move into these interface areas, the interactions between humans and the creatures becomes complicated.

Humans build nice houses, and many animals take note and decide the human dwelling would be a nice place for them to nest too. Raccoons, squirrels, and bats in the attic, raccoons and skunks under the porch, are just some of the ways wild animals have decided to move into our dwellings and camp out.

Unfortunately, the animals aren't the best tenants; they create their own entrances, tend to make a mess when they build nests, don't use the bathroom, preferring to just relieve themselves wherever when nature calls, and they almost always leave the property in a worse condition than when they found it. Homeowners then have to evict these bad tenants and clean up the messes.

The Homeowners Policy

That's where the homeowners policy comes in, and over time the policy language has changed to be more specific and detail what exactly is excluded. In the ISO HO 00 03 04 91 and the HO 00 03 10 00 forms, the exclusion was for "birds, vermin, rodents, or insects". This needs to be looked at closely, as when you break it down it's excluding certain types of creatures.

Birds

First, it excludes birds, which is fairly straightforward. As some of the excluded creatures fall into certain scientific categorizations, a quick review is in order. All living things are sorted according to the scientific categories as follows: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. If an excluded term relates to one of these levels of categorization, then only creatures within that categorization are excluded.