Synopsis: [A young married couple is] renting out a room in their house to an older man that mostly keeps to himself, but who owns a birdcage filled with particularly odd and noisy birds that he forbids the young couple from looking at. One day the man goes out of town for a week, and the couple decide to take the opportunity to lift the cover off of the birdcage to behold the avian entities inside. Instead, they observe a miniature house filled with no visible birds, but with unmistakable signs of life although no living creatures are ever visible. The remainder off the book deals with the couples efforts to visit with the mysterious miniature residents that are sharing their apartment with them, and with the old man's reaction when he discovers that they have been meddling in his affairs. -- from a review