Daily writing prompt

Do you ever see wild animals?

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I live in downtown Vancouver: what do you think?

There are massive differences between people who have a medical issue such as drug and alcohol addiction and are in desperate need of treatment and rehabilitation (resources are scarce and overburdened here, in fact, enabling addiction appears to be the treatment); a person with legitimate mental-health problems who cannot find adequate resources or are unable to, due to their condition; and a completely berserk criminal who knows that he can wantonly–and repeatedly–cause all sorts of chaos in the city without any lasting repercussions. You can thank Canada’s Bill C-5 for that. Check out this animal, who randomly sucker-punched a young passerby, and who had been caught and released just a few days prior for the exact same offense.

Vancouver has plenty of wild animals destroying public property, swinging machetes about and wielding knives, and I do recall seeing one on East Pender about four years ago. That particular animal was screaming and clutching a machete–2020 was the year of everything, including the machete–as he stomped furiously down the street towards an unknown destination or target. Needless to say, a lot of scrambling and cries of fear took place around him. It is an insurmountable challenge to feel compassion for what was once a human being who has turned feral, primal, and as dangerous as a Grizzly bear on the loose.

However, to move away from the topic of the savage, constant unraveling of dangerous animals on city streets, I’ll share with you my favourite wild animal video: a rescue beaver who is simply hardwired to do what beautiful, intelligent, natural engineers have to do. Note her careful consideration of each step, the deliberate assembly of each item, the gentle “pat pat…that’ll work” after she places a Spongebob toy onto her masterpiece, the “okay, maybe not” expression after the stuffed dog tumbles down, and the final, perfect touch of a flip-flop placed just so.

Merry Christmas. Let’s hope things turn around and we get civility again.