THE LONELY WORK COMMUTE
City life during a global pandemic isn’t at all like the movies unless you’ve seen Shaun of the Dead. But what do the city’s other residents think?
My thirty-something son normally works in a city high-rise, and the work commute has always been long and arduous. Now, his morning drive is easy and car-parking is a breeze, and it’s about to get easier as he begins working remotely from home. It’s difficult to imagine a big city almost deserted during daylight hours, unless it’s part of a scene in a post-apocalyptic movie, but that’s exactly what is happening all around the world. Unprecedented is a word being annoyingly over-used to describe the effects of COVID-19, but it fits the vision of a city that has suddenly gone to sleep. The fake-homeless (professional beggars) have left the metropolis and are currently helping to strip supermarket shelves on behalf of China’s wealthy, the true homeless have been gathered up and housed in hotels, commuters no longer jostle each other cheek-by-jowl in the morning rush to begin work, and traffic has reduced to virtually nothing. I suspect the streets haven’t been this quiet since the motor car replaced the horse, and I’ll bet they’ve never looked or smelt cleaner. And for those brave few who continue to carry on as the majority close their front doors and wait, it must feel to them as though the city has lost its soul overnight.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time living in a few cities before withdrawing to the country, and each has its own soul; the nuances that make it unique in the world are a huge and essential part of a city’s DNA. No two cities are alike, and neither are their people, but there is one constant no matter where in the world you are – the birds of the city. Whether it’s the pigeons of London, sea birds of San Diego, herons of New York, crows of Rome, geese of Reykjavik, swans of Prague or wild ducks of Moscow, every one of those winged creatures must be currently scratching their heads and wondering what on earth is happening. One moment, life was a whirl of exhaust fumes, food scraps, noise and movement, and in the next the air became breathable, the food supply dried up and everything virtually stopped. Unlike it was for humans, there was no warning for city birds; they had no chance to panic buy and hunker down, as they didn’t see the memo. Because I’m a writer with a fertile imagination and an inner Elbit currently in the driving seat, I wonder what the aerial conversation might be between a couple of our feathered friends. I’ll call them Cecil and Marg:
Marg: Cec, is it just me or have all the humans buggered off?
Cecil: No Marg, it’s just you. They’re probably just late.
Marg: For fourteen moons?
Cecil: Has it been that long? Silly me; I forget I’m a bird with the brain the size of a walnut!
Marg: That’s because you have a brain the size of the walnut, Cecil. I wonder where they all are…
Cecil: Who?
Marg: The humans, silly! Hardly a two-legged creature on the streets for fourteen moons straight, no food scraps, the air feels odd and strangely thin and the silence is doing my head in. I think something’s up!
Cecil: No Marg, it’s just you. They’re probably late.
Marg: Cecil, talking to you is like talking to a bloody goldfish! Your parents must have dipped your egg into the shallow end of the gene pool before you hatched. What I’m trying to say is I’m getting worried about the lack of human activity and food down there. Mind you, Ethel from over the way tells me real estate’s currently easy to find and I was thinking it might be time to upgrade to a larger nest.
Cecil: Ethel would. Fred tells me she’s become quite the snob since they moved into that high-rise elm. Marg, I’m hungry; what’s for lunch?
Marg: I dunno, do I? Since the humans stopped arriving, there’s no food.
Cecil: Have the human’s stopped arriving?
Marg: Cecil, I swear I’ll peck you to pieces if you don’t concentrate! Now read my beak: the humans have all but disappeared and there’s hardly any food around.
Cecil: No Marg, it’s just you. They’re probably late.
Marg: That’s it; I give up! I’m off to the McDonalds carpark. Sooner or later, a carload of teenagers will turn up and throw our lunch out of the window. If you want to come, that’s fine, but I’m going to pop in on that plane tree avenue on the way back and see what’s available.
We humans are always telling each other to watch birds and other wildlife for signs of impending natural disasters, but perhaps the birds are watching us for similar signs. It may well be that they see the human desertion of their city as a sign of impending doom, and as such, are about to desert as well. Either that or there’s a whole Animal Farm thing going on in the avian world, and we’re about to witness an Orwellian takeover that would put Napoleon the Pig to shame. In their eyes, there is no COVID-19; their pandemic is not a disease but their world turning upside down overnight. We self-absorbed humans are an odd lot, aren’t we? Here we are facing life and possible death daily in our contact with each other, but most of us give no thought to what the animal world might think about the upheaval of the past few weeks and months. For any budding David Attenborough, this is a golden opportunity to get out there on the front lines and start filming. Forget the wildebeest of the African plains, the penguins of the Antarctic and the monkeys of Madagascar; it’s all happening in the rooftops, treetops and roofs of the major cities around the world and it promises to be a production worthy of Cecil B. De Mille at his best!
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Elbit vs. COVID-19 