Aggressive squirrels are attacking NYC residents and the concerning aspect of this behaviour is that, at the moment, people are unsure why. The lady in the video had a rabies jab just in case but apparently, as you will hear in the video, squirrels very rarely get rabies and therefore the risk to people is incredibly low. I wonder whether this abnormal behaviour by New York City’s squirrels is because of the coronavirus pandemic? People are far less often outside, in parks and other open spaces in the city. This allows squirrels to take charge of their territory. As the human has retreated it has allowed the squirrel to dominate and armed with that sense of dominance they are now attacking people who happen to come onto their territory.
It seems to me to be a change in the balance and relationship between people and wildlife. Wildlife is able to express itself more naturally because of the coronavirus pandemic’s lockdowns. It might not be a full-blown lockdown as is happening in the UK but there’s no doubt that people have retreated from normal life and become very insular in order to keep a social distance. That’s my theory and I humbly suggest that it is quite a good one.
There have been some positives of the pandemic. All the benefits have been in respect of humans curbing their activities such as consumerism, environmental pollution, less traffic, less noise et cetera. In curbing their normal activities humans have allowed nature to be free of the human scourge. I’m being too critical of humans but human behaviour in all its forms is gradually destroying the planet. People realise that now. Plastic, once a wonderful product, so versatile and so useful, is now seen as being a catastrophic polluter of the environment and particularly the oceans. The world has changed.
Abuses of nature caused the coronavirus pandemic, and in suffering abuse nature automatically strikes back in protecting itself. It has pushed people back which has allowed nature to breathe and the animals to thrive and in thriving they attack the intruding human as demonstrated in this unusual story from New York City.
