Tambourine
The tambourine is definitely for one character and apparently for the author the ultimate symbol of foolishness or uselessness or embarrassment. It is hard to determine with precision and likely it is a combination of all. The observation that nobody who has ever played this simplest of musical instruments could ever truly have been loved by their mother surely signifies some awful symbolic status upon the tambourine.
Mistress Mickle
Mistress Mickle is the name of a character on a TV show played by an actress named Jenny Early. Even though the story in the collection is about the actress, Jenny, she is constantly referred to by the name of the character she plays, Mistress Mickle. It is through this device that Jenny/Mickle becomes symbolic of the way that almost all us become the persona we wear as a facade covering our true selves.
puffins
Puffins are kind of like penguins except that they are more of a mystery. They also behave more like humans. In the story "Proof" a trip to see puffins in their natural habitat situates them, in fact, as being more like humans than like penguins. Especially to those who humans who have trouble connecting with other members of their species.
puppets
Puppets and ventriloquist dummies populate the stories an unexpected degree. There is almost always a love/hate relationship between the humans and the puppets. So add the puppets to the puffins as symbolic incarnations of humanity in a collection marked by a propensity to endow non-human participants with some level of humanity.
grackles
One of the stories here starts out by suggesting that some grackles may be in possession of a soul while other grackles may benefit from intelligence, but finding an intelligent grackle with a soul would be a rare achievement indeed. And, guess what: this judgment can also be applied equally to human beings. Throughout the story, the grackles are personified in a way that suggests a possibility that humans can equally well be grackle-fied. Add these birds to the puffins--and puppets and dolls and TV characters--that are symbols of our own humanity.
