Coyotes, Toads, and Goats

With San Francisco Bay to the East and Hwy 101 to the
West ducks and geese are the only wildlife in Foster City.

It's been only a few weeks of hunkering down, but already the animals are coming out of hiding:

It turns out boar, deer, coyotes and birds have been right under our noses all along.

In dystopian science fiction the death of civilization is represented by deserted, crumbling cities. Fiction permits writers to bypass decades; in our current reality the empty alabaster cities aren't crumbling...yet.

(WSJ image)

(Digression: Horace Smith's Ozymandias is not as well known as Shelley's. However, the former does make explicit the impermanence of modern edifices, while in Shelley's version--the much better poem--it is only inferred.)

Among COVID-19's many lessons: film-makers, if you're going to depict a humanity-less future don't stop with dogs, cats, and rats in the city. You might want to add coyotes, toads, and goats.

A mountain goat in Llandudno, Wales, in March. (WSJ Photo)