As COVID-19 keeps us apart, we will let the animals in
First, the eyes. I pressed mine to the opening of a little wooden house. The park ranger behind me cleared her throat.
“Yeah, watch out because they jum–”
The shiniest eyes bugged out, followed by a little furry body.
An Australian northern quoll is fast, spotty and critically endangered. Ginger Meggs landed deftly on my neck, scuttled across my shoulders and flattened his body against my wrist. Normal quoll behaviour?
“He’s feeling your pulse,” the ranger told me. She asked if maybe I was a calm sort of a person because he stayed there, belly warm against wrist, reading my blood. No one has ever described me as calm. In the human world, I’m excitable. But maybe in quoll time my big human heart is languid, lazy.
I was living alone in a caravan in the Northern Territory Wildlife Park at the time, researching my novel about communication between humans and animals, which begins, a little too presciently, with a new flu pandemic sweeping the country. Ginger Meggs was living alone in an enclosure. We paused there together, sharing my heartbeat.
But now, in the age of coronavirus, we all live alone. Or with a couple of people, max: our bubble buddies that we are happy to share germs with and no one else. While we keep apart to protect each other, there are still many moments of connection online. We can watch author Miranda July dance in her loungeroom. We can learn how to do the #BlackfellaHug on NITV, celebrate Jacinda Ardern or deplore Scott Morrison together on Facebook. But on the last day of on-site work, I can’t hug my crying colleagues. I recently moved from Melbourne to regional New Zealand and can’t get to my family across the deep Tasman Sea. And I can’t cope with the thousands who have already died from coronavirus.
In my riverside town, people tended to holler “hello” of a morning. This week, they’ve been inadvertently reduced to a whisper, as though even a greeting might imply inappropriate social contact. Our bodies move awkwardly in public – we don’t know how to communicate togetherness and solidarity while being so physically separate.
But then a woman appears on the river bend, easy limbed, with a dog keeping pace. She doesn’t break her stride when she sees me, she smiles; she’s not alone because she’s with a dog. And that dog wags, showing us how to be in the world.
“You know who this is all working out very nicely for?” author Ella Holcomb posted online, “PETS! VERY nicely indeed.”
Another Twitter user had to take their dog, Rolo, to the vet because he sprained his tail from excessive wagging at his suddenly homebound humans. (Rolo now has an Instagram account.)
Meanwhile my cousin jokes that, “While the rest of NZ was panic buying toilet paper and tins of tomatoes, we panic bought a dog!”
Dr Liz Walker, CEO of RSPCA Victoria, tells me over a stuttering Zoom connection that, “People with pets have higher self-esteem, are less likely to be depressed, and cope with grief and stress more effectively than non-pet owners. Especially now amid Covid-19, animals give us a sense of connectedness. No matter how bad it gets, animals make you feel safe, they make you feel happy and they’re always glad to see you.”
As countries close down and our home lives get smaller, I too “joke” with my partner that now is the exact right time to rescue a rabbit. I imagine long days of watching Cottontail chewing the furniture and pooing on the rug. And indeed, pets are generally good. For us. But – and if I didn’t think so much about this I’d have a Cottontail with me right now – what about the animals? How do they fare in this new world paradigm?
Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan, an animal welfare expert from UNSW, says that in times of crises, “we’re looking out for the humans, but animals are considered dispensable for some. There’s no doubt that you’re still vulnerable when you’re a nonhuman animal, even as a companion animal”. Some people, for instance, have asked vets to put pets to death because they’re concerned that they might carry the virus. New research that cat-to-cat transmission is possible not only increases fear, but makes a pet’s position as beloved family member increasingly tenuous. When it comes down to it, will we continue to protect our companions?
Walker agrees that while it’s natural to seek support from your companion animal, “it’s also important to prioritise downtime for everyone, including animals, so that when this ends – and it will – animals can cope with the changes in the household. Cats sleep for 18 hours and if you’re home when you were once out, you’re disturbing their sleep patterns. I would get cranky too!”
If we’re to eradicate coronavirus globally, isolation will drag into months; for some of us, the birds that we see hanging around outside the window could become our only non-screen living contact for the day. Maybe having more time to watch animals and observe that they have their own lives and needs, will give us a new appreciation for them. “That feeling of connectedness that you get from animals, and watching them do their thing … it’s extremely comforting. A lot of people get a whole lot of joy out of watching animals experience happiness and freedom,” Walker says. Can we stop, look around ourselves, realise that we aren’t the centre of the universe, and try to be a different way in the world?
Our Zoom chat is broken by a terrifying screech as the New Zealand government sends an emergency alert to every mobile phone in the country, marking the beginning of phase four: total isolation: “Follow the rules and STAY HOME. Act as if you have Covid-19. This will save lives”. For the next four weeks, I’m allowed to see people on the screen and my partner in person – no one else.
But I know that when I go for my sanctioned solitary river walk, I will still see life. Everywhere. Like a scene from the novel I just published, where a strange new flu enables us to understand other animals, my senses will be heightened to them. In the skies, crawling between rocks, hopping in the long grass and waddling at the end of a lead. From their perspective, my presence might mean very little – they have their own thing going on – but my heartbeat will slow, calm for a moment. It will mean the world.
• The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean McKay is out now through Scribein paperback or as eBook
The Guardian
