Ralph Oswick: Welcome to the animal kingdom

As I’ve mentioned previously, since lockdown our wildlife thinks it has inherited the Earth!

There’s a blackbird sings from dawn until dusk near my apartment. Ah, you say, you notice it because there’s no traffic noise.

No, this fellow has observed that there are suddenly no people in the world and in his little bird brain he thinks he has won the territory.

Does he ever stop to eat or go for a quick turn around his kingdom?

Does he heck! I’ve never seen a creature so pleased with himself. What’s more, he thinks he created the situation all on his own.

Two Canada geese have practically taken up residency under my riverside balcony. I feed them at precisely 10am but they are queueing from 4am, about the time the blackbird starts warbling.

And may I say, not practising social distancing. People have dubbed them Bill and Ben, but I’m sorry to say they are not a 21st century same sex couple.

It’s a fact that all Canada geese are identical and only a Canada goose can tell the boys from the girls.

They think they have me under their feathery thumbs.

Well, ok, I admit it, we have upgraded from stale crusts to expensive gourmet swan food from Ocado. Now they think they are swans! Reminds me of a song by

Danny Kaye.

You read about goats invading a Welsh town, presumably due to the lack of picnic detritus for them to munch through up in their normal mountain beauty spot home. Scary.

Not quite on the scale of that town in Canada overrun by polar bears, but scary nevertheless.

Some years ago when I was feeling flush I booked a package holiday in the Seychelles. The wildlife definitely owns the place there.

Even at breakfast, you invariably share your table with flocks of little birds fighting over your sugar bowl.

This annoyed two very posy South African guys at the next table.

‘In here, hotel. Out there, wildlife!’ declared one, addressing the waitress as if it were her fault that her island home supported more bird species than practically anywhere else on Earth.

They were on a fashion shoot, and one day I saw them bobbing in the crystal clear water off the hotel beach, each sporting one of those reflective cardboard devises that are meant to help one get an even tan, and much favoured by leatherskinned matrons in Palm Beach.

There were always biscuits provided with the in-room coffee making facilities, but they tended to go soft due to the humidity and I usually fed mine to the fish.

I sidled past the ghastly poseurs, secretly crushing damp biscuit crumbs into the sea.

Suddenly the two nut-brown fashion icons were mobbed by a churning shoal of stripy sergeant major fish.

These are harmless, but bear a strong resemblance to piranhas.

Cue much shrieking and a frantic rush to the shore.

‘I swear to god I’m never going to swim in these islands again’ declared one as he wiped away a tear and gulped down a posttrauma Pina Colada in the beachside bar.