Feral populations that are currently re-establishing themselves in abandoned urban areas during the COVID-19 lock-down

By Mark Sadler

As the traditional urban fauna of discarded underwear, solitary woollen mittens, and rusting pieces of dismembered bicycle, padlocked forlornly to street furniture, recede from the urban landscape, populations thought long-banished from our cities have returned to reclaim the abandoned streets, plazas and designated municipal safe spaces.

1. Rock pools

Once a common sight on the American prairie, where they existed in symbiotic harmony alongside the thundering herds of migratory buffalo. The surging demand for stone bird baths, coupled with the destruction of their traditional habitat, has pushed these craggy, saltwater ecosystems to the literal brink. Colonies are now most-commonly observed clinging to the deserted coastal fringes of the American continent, and to the surface detail of Neil Young lyrics focusing on the lives of Native Americans, prior to the arrival of European settlers. It has taken the depopulation of major census-designated places, such as Willimantic, Connecticut, to encourage their furtive return to the suburbs, where they prey on defenceless garden ponds.

For those without ponds, who wish to entice wild rock pools into their backyards, a 3.5% saltwater / 7% small crab solution will promote a mirror-like surface, and slippery sides, perfect for catching a curious, but unwary child off-guard.

2. The Victorian romance novels of Leonard Manley

What uncanny phenomena could possibly account for hundreds of second-hand copies of these amorous bodice-ripping tales, populated by lustful highwaymen and the wandering, calloused hands of Royal Naval gunners, being strewn across a one-block area of Brooklyn?

Are these slender volumes of proto-erotica, anonymously penned by Lady Braithwaite of Northumbria, the discarded ballast of a mobile library based inside the basket of a hot air balloon?

Could they perhaps be a belated promotional effort by the Leonard Manley street team, taking advantage of their furlough from the drudgery of the Victorian cotton mill, where they would ordinarily toil for fourteen straight hours each day?

The most-likely explanation is that they are the spent ammunition in a vicious spat between Agnes Trewern and Brian Pincombe, whose once-torrid affair / book club has diverged into rival book stores, located on opposite sides of Church Avenue.

Prevented from coming to physical blows by current social distancing laws, Trewern and Pincombe have resorted to hurling these ubiquitous tomes at each other, with certain passages in the text bookmarked and aggressively underlined in ballpoint pen, often with accompanying scribbled footnotes.

3. The rose-covered, thatched cottages of the 19^th century English village of Lower Diddlethorpe

Imported in bulk to the United States from England, the American craze for these quaint rural domiciles ended abruptly on the 31^st December, 1899. Since then, disparate wild populations have been known to occupy wooded thickets. A recent sighting of the Lower Diddlethorpe vicarage, raiding trashcans in down-town Detroit, has led to breathless online speculation that Diddlethorpe Manor, and its lovable cast of above and below-stairs characters, might soon make an appearance.

4. The wild, single-use plastic bags of Telegraph Hill

A welcome to return to this San Francisco neighbourhood, these airborne predators have been spotted soaring on updraughts of Californian hot air, their mouths agape like basking sharks, inhaling the fragrant tobacco smoke and airborne virus clouds that form their staple diet.

5. Tattered newspaper front pages, bearing doom-laden expositional headlines

The published product of fictional newspapers, these urban tumble-weeds are thought to have escaped from captivity on the set of a post-apocalyptic, 1970s sci-fi disaster movie. Having survived the death of print media, they are once-more carried by plague winds through the deserted streets of our depopulated cities.