Wild Kingdom

The other day, I saw something wonderful on Twitter. (In case you're wondering, for every truly dreadful item that appears on Twitter, there's always a countervailing tweet that makes me smile.) The tweet I so enjoyed was of a groundhog calmly nibbling on a piece of pizza while standing on the someone's porch in Philadelphia. The homeowner's dogs were standing on the other side of the glass door, taking the whole thing in. Neither groundhog nor puppers seemed especially fazed. (The link to the video is here.)

In Cape Town, South Africa, penguins are hitting the streets. And in Adelaide, Australia, kangaroos are hopping to it. 

I haven't seen much by way of out of the ordinary fauna in Boston, but I have observed that the fat, dumb and happy squirrels in the public garden are no longer quite so happy now that they're not being fed so regularly and are aggressively approaching walkers. Masks don't seem to put them off in the least, but if you make a kicking motion, they back off. 

On the Esplanade, the waddling Canada geese are no longer content with just crapping all over the walkways. Now they're plunking their arses right down in the middle of those walkways and just sitting there. Easy enough for a pedestrian to walk around, but the bikers and bladers seem a bit annoyed at having to skirt around them.

My sister Kath reports that the wild turkeys, which were already in command of some parts of her town of Brookline, have gotten bolder and more brazen while strutting their stuff. And did my sister Trish tell me she saw a fox in Salem? (My brother Tom's neighbor had his car broken into by a bear who smelled dog food. But Tom lives next to nature in the state of Washington. Bears on the amble are pretty common. And when we were visiting a few years back, my brother-in-law narrowly missed a collision with something big and scary. Moose? Elk?)

Back in the urban world, there've always been a fair amount of rabbits around here. Are there more, or is it just my imagination? 

In the absence of homo sapiens, the animals, it seems, have been taking over.

In Nara, Japan, sika deer are wandering the silent streets and subway platforms. London’s red foxes are enjoying the morning sun in quiet parks. Mountain goats in Llandudno, Wales, are munching their way through gardens and mowing down hedges. Black bears are lumbering through the streets of cities in North Carolina and California, Maine, and Maryland. Peacocks are perching on cars in Mumbai. Whales are gliding through the usually busy waters off Marseille.Coyotes in Chicago and San Francisco. Mountain lions in Boulder. Boars in Bergamo, Italy. (Source: Boston Globe)

And of course: 

A pizza-eating groundhog in Philadelphia.

It's everywhere! A veritable pandemic of animal life.

Across the globe, animals — urban wildlife — are tentatively filling the vacuum left behind by humans staying home.

The animals, with a lot less traffic, are throwing caution to the wind and venturing out in areas where they wouldn't normally be seen. In Boston, we may be getting more sightings of coyotes and racoons, as they used to restrict their wanderings to after dark but are now showing their faces during the day. I haven't seen either racoon or coyote on my urban walks. Yet. (I have seen racoons here in the past, and I know they something rummage through the trash. They apparently really like avocados. As for coyotes, the closest I've come is one my friend Peter and I came across on the beach in Swampscott last fall.)

For animals who rely on restaurant leavings, food is what's driving them into residential neighborhood.

After the closure of restaurants in New Orleans, for example, residents reported seeing swarms of rats in the streets, hunting for food. 

Now that is something I could live without... 

Other animals, beyond the fat, dumb, and happy squirrels in the Boston Public Garden, rely on tourists to feed them. In Thailand, gang wars have broken out among the monkey population. Something that is quite entertaining to watch at a distance of, say, 8,500 miles or so. But I wouldn't want to see it when I walked out my front door. (Although, in truth, I'd rather witness a monkey gang war than a swarm of rats.)

I'm all for the wild kingdom. I'd love seeing a penguin out for a stroll. And mountain goats would be interesting.

But mostly I'm looking for the day when we take back the streets.