Why animals will pay the price

As a child, I was always a little uncomfortable going to the circus and watching animals do tricks. There was something demeaning about reducing the majesty of a lion to sitting on a coloured ball or leaping through a hoop, seeing an elephant play soccer or kneel on whip command, horses running in giddy circles and monkeys wearing skirts. Much the same way, I ducked trips to the zoo where animals are caged and spend lifetimes pacing ten metres or flying as high as a wire mesh above.
I believe that latent claustrophobia was awakened these past few months and my empathy with the captured fauna intensified. Incarceration is rough on the body and the soul. Give me a sanctuary or a game park where animals roam free in preference to captivity.
That said, and the romance of mildly bewildered animals entering human habitats suddenly devoid of those humans now fading, there is a more sinister development on the cards. The peacocks strutting at street corners and leopards emboldened into entering kiddie parks have disappeared as a news item. In their place is a new threat from other animal quarters.
In New York, hungry rats are now entering residences because their main food source from garbage dumps has dropped dramatically with most restaurants shut. Raccoons and bandicoots are getting bolder with humans missing in the equation. But not as bold as the monkeys in New Delhi's government seat of power where simians rule the roost and have now turned that prime central real estate into a mini planet of the apes.
Last week, they accosted a carrier and stole his bag loaded with coronavirus vials of blood. They are hungry and their customary lunchtime stealing or being fed by humans has stopped, thereby making them more aggressive.
As humans isolate, wildlife roams free. Coyotes on a city street in Los Angeles. A kangaroo lost in an Adelaide mall. A puma in a Santiago villa, foraging for food. These are manifestations of confusion in the animal world where the human element has been hugely subdued. Heavy rains and the distraction from Covid-19 reduced the control measures in many countries, resulting in locust swarms across the Middle East and Asia and Africa.
Mosquito-borne diseases are on the rise exponentially and the rainy season promises more ill. Reptiles are widening their territory and venturing into places that were human spaces. Sharks are being spotted closer to the shores around the world, what with beaches closed.
It is all a huge mess and primed for conflict as we come out of the pandemic and attempt to regain our territory. Sadly, it will be the innocent animals that will pay the price. Already, in much of Africa, hungry humans have taken poaching to a new and dubious high.
bikram@khaleejtimes.com