Thursday

Responding to my recent note* about New Delhi deputy mayor Sawinder Singh Bajwa falling to his death during his own response to a band of attacking monkeys, a beloved reader sends in this New York Times follow up. The article is to-the-point about the burgeoning wild animal problems plaguing the Indian capital city. It will be a hard tide to turn: the Times cites India's rapid urbanization as acres of surrounding green spaces are devoured every year, prompting many monkeys to pick-up and move downtown. The article doesn't explicitly mention this, but bad municipal practices in lower-income areas make it easy for these monkeys to forage for food, fostering in turn their habituation with people and dispelling the usual fear with which wild animals regard human proximity. Possibly, the reverse is also true: people forget that wild animals are dangerous due to their growing boldness and frequency. The other reverse is certainly true: my intrepid reader chooses to reside in New York City rather than live in the constant strangling shadow of her own monkey fear, massively swollen proportionate to a New Yorker's distance from actual monkeys. Up till now I've calmly, ruthlessly, disregarded this fear as an irrational hysteria. But today my reader has convinced me, calling my attention to one terrifying passage from the linked article:

The lawyer charged by the High Court with ensuring the monkeys' removal said recently that things were as bad as ever, even in some leading hospitals. "They attack patients who are being rolled inside the hospital, pull out IV tubes and scamper off to drink the fluids" [...]

There's nothing quite creepier than this mental image of vampire macaques, beadily watchful from some dark purchase, swilling medical tubes of blood and chemical mutagens like candy, like... like nightmare Pixy Stix. [Cavin]