Pests begin with stored stuff
A pest is an animal that attacks things we own, so there can be no pests until people have possessions. Once humans started setting food aside and storing it, the animals that raided those stores became enemies.
We build the niche, then blame
Garbage piles, food stores and city ledges create rich new habitats, and the animals adaptable enough to fill them thrive by living off our leavings. We then resent them for succeeding in the very conditions we made. As the author puts it, we brought them there, and then we got mad when they did well.
Pest is a judgment, not species
No animal is a pest by nature. The label comes from what people believe about it and whether it troubles them. The same creature can be poisoned as vermin and protected as a lab subject, or hunted in autumn and adored in spring, and a well-liked squirrel is basically a rat with better PR.
Pests track poverty and power
Having rats depends less on the rats than on whether people can afford clean housing, proper food storage, or any home at all, so infestations become a mark of low status. Larger power structures shape conflicts too. Colonial park systems pushed out the people who lived on the land, and colonial demand created the market for poached ivory.
Coexistence means giving up control
Killing pests rarely works, because as long as the niche remains, the animals come back again and again. Living with them requires learning what attracts and repels them. It also means accepting some inconvenience and some loss of control.