WILD LIFE
There are certain moments when you realize that everything you always assumed about the natural world was wrong. I knew that the pandemic had really changed things when I saw a massive furry beast in my backyard. A few mornings ago, I opened our downstairs blind and saw a groundhog the size of a small dog calmly staring back at me less than ten feet away. In the bright sunlight it was having a nice breakfast by eating our grass and back garden. Though the sight of this intruder was unusual, its attitude was what was most striking. It barely blinked but instead eyed me with a calm, even superior gaze. Our small fenced in backyard has always hosted cats, squirrels and birds. However, since we live in the heart of the city of Oneonta and are less than 3 minutes’ walk from Main Street, the call of nature is usually muted for us. On ordinary mornings as we rush about to get ready for work, any groundhogs are hidden. They prefer to wait for nighttime to forage. Animals consciously avoid my family’s frenetic morning routine as we heave our bags and backpacks into the van to speed to work and take our daughter to school. However, now wildlife has taken over.
When I look for items online to update myself on news about the pandemic, I often come across similar out of kilter animal images on my computer screen: Mountain goats quietly strolling through empty village streets; bears checking out dogs with nary a human to intervene; lions having a nice mid-day nap on paved roads in Africa. What does it mean? The animal kingdom, previously cowed by a loud and visible human presence, has been emboldened. As humans scurry into cover and hide indoors, the outdoors has changed.
When I was young, there was a powerful animated film I saw called Watership Down. As memory serves, it was about rabbits endangered by the encroachments of human development. Cars were lethal weapons to the rabbits. Bulldozers threatened their burrows. Man was out to conquer nature. Wildlife would be tamed. The animals’ arcadia was to be destroyed. Many precious rabbits died. I cried childhood tears as I watched the film. This theme has been repeated in many other stories and films, but it seems to be on hold for the moment. The pandemic has shown that humans are not always all powerful. It has shown that nature can reconfigure the lives of humans and beasts.
There is one final thing that my moment with the groundhog taught me. We have always assumed that we had the freedom to go anywhere. We had machines and large brains. Animals had to adapt to us. We watched them and they hid from us. The pandemic has flipped the script. Now we hide and they watch us. Perhaps the wild ones were the wise ones all along.
