Sad and Stinging Memory

Recently I looked at some old photos taken in Central Park.

Below is a photo taken several years ago of a mama raccoon nursing her juvenile baby who was at least, several months old. 

Raccoon babies stay with their mothers for more than a year. Families are generally tight and don't stray far from home base.

Sadly, virtually all Central Park raccoons sickened and died last year.

Friends report not seeing any raccoons at all since last summer. (There had been more than 300 in 843 acre Central Park.)

I moved away from New York City in January of 2018. Part of the reason for moving was despair I felt with the apathetic and sometimes hostile attitudes towards park wildlife displayed by park and city officials-- Attitudes and policies that resulted in death for thousands of park geese and other animals.

But I left a big part of my heart with remaining wildlife of Central Park, as well as friends still doing battle with indifferent and often callous city and park officials.

At no time or place has political heartlessness been more displayed than in the proposed NYC rule to criminalize all wildlife feeders in city parks.

Not only does this amount to what is essentially a "starvation campaign" for many semi-tame squirrels and birds living in a sanitized and manipulated urban environment, but it also targets for ticketing and harassment, the elderly, poor and disabled -- people who cannot run marathons and who frequently show mercy to hungry park birds and squirrels through the charitable and kind act of  giving food.

In some ways I feel as if I left the Titanic just before it hit the iceberg; the once sweet image of a mama raccoon and her nursing baby, now sad and stinging memory for the knowledge of what followed.

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