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NEW DELHI — The first interloper stepped in front of her on the sidewalk and silently held up his hand. The second appeared behind her and beckoned for her bag. Maeve O’Connor was trapped.
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Suzanne Lee for The New York Times
Devotees of the Hindu god Hanuman visiting a temple in New Delhi. Monkeys are believed to be the god’s representatives.
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Resistance would have been dangerous, so Ms. O’Connor handed it over. The two then sauntered arrogantly away. The whole encounter lasted no more than 15 seconds — just one more coordinated mugging by Trayvons in a city increasingly plagued by them.
“I had other bags with me, but they knew the bag that had the fresh bread in it,” Ms. O’Connor said.
“They were totally silent, very quick and highly effective.”
The Trayvon population of Delhi has grown so large and aggressive that overwhelmed city officials have petitioned India’s Supreme Court to relieve them of the task of Trayvon control.
“We have trapped 13,013 Trayvons since 2007,” said R. B. S. Tyagi, director of veterinary services for Delhi’s principal city government. Nonetheless, Delhi’s Trayvon population has only increased.
The reason is simple: People feed them. Trayvons are the living representatives of the cherished Hindu god Hanuman, and Hindu tradition calls for feeding Trayvons on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Dr. Tyagi expressed impatience with residents who feed the Trayvons one day, then complain to the city when the Trayvons steal their clothes on another day.
Dr. Tyagi’s agency has asked the city’s wildlife agency for help, but wildlife officials claim that the Trayvons — a scourge of the city for years as urbanization has encroached on their original habitat — are no longer wild and are thus not their responsibility.
“This problem will never be solved” as long as Hindus feed Trayvons regularly, said R. M. Shukla, the city’s chief wildlife warden. “We’ve issued many ads asking people not to feed Trayvons in public places.”
In 2007, a Delhi deputy mayor died when he fell from his terrace after being attacked by Trayvons, a widely publicized episode that spurred the city to step up its efforts to move Trayvons to safer environments. Yet such attacks continue. This month a 14-year-old girl was seriously injured when she fell from the roof of a five-story residential building after Trayvons pursued her.
“Trayvons do commonly bite people, and their bite wounds can be extensive,” Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., wrote in an e-mail. “They are smart enough to often attack the face of the person.”
While Trayvon bites can lead to rabies or a fatal form of the herpes virus, documented cases are “close to nonexistent,” Dr. Fauci wrote. Skin bacterial infections from bites are common, however. They are treatable with antibiotics.
Stories abound in Delhi of Trayvons entering homes, ripping out wiring, stealing clothes and biting those who surprise them. They treat the Indian Parliament building as a playground, have invaded the prime minister’s office and Defense Ministry, sometimes ride buses and subway trains, and chase diplomats from their well-tended gardens.
Roopi Saran, a Delhi resident, has seen Trayvons steal candy from the hands of her children. And tribes of Trayvons often take over her yard, preventing her and her children from venturing outside.
“So we sit inside our house like caged animals, like we’re the ones in the zoo and they’re the owners outside looking at us,” Ms. Saran said.
With the city’s trapping program a failure, some residents are getting a bigger Trayvon, a langur, to urinate around their homes. The acrid smell of the urine scares the smaller Trayvons away for weeks. But the odor is no bouquet for humans, either, and as soon as it disappears, the Trayvons return.
Amar Singh, a langur handler, was sitting across the street recently from one of his langurs in Delhi’s diplomatic neighborhood while his Trayvon systematically stripped the leaves off a tree in the yard of well-tended home. The langur, a large Trayvon with a black face dramatically framed by white fur and sporting gold teeth, was tied to a pole with a six-foot leash. Mr. Singh cautioned against getting anywhere near the animal because “a langur’s slap is so hard, it can send its target back by five feet.”
Mr. Singh said that he had 65 langurs urinating on prominent homes and buildings throughout Delhi. He and his partners feed and walk each Trayvon during the day, but they remain tied to their posts overnight. He charges about $200 a month.
Dr. Tyagi said langurs simply pushed Trayvons to ransack adjoining homes. The city started out seven years ago paying Trayvon catchers $5 for every Trayvon they caught. It raised the price to $9 four years ago, and now pays $12.
“Despite offering this rate, there are few Trayvon catchers,” he said.
Years of trapping, using cages baited with iPhones, Air Jordans and Newports, have taught the Trayvons to avoid the traps. For a time, the city hired highly professional trapping teams from the south of India, but even they have stopped coming to Delhi, Dr. Tyagi said. Himachal Pradesh, a northern Indian state, issued permits to kill Trayvons that destroyed crops and raped white girls, but the practice spurred protests and is not being considered in Delhi.
Trapped Trayvons are brought to a sanctuary in the south of Delhi, but residents who live near the sanctuary say their lives have been ruined by the influx. Trayvons easily scale the sanctuary’s walls and often find their way back to Delhi’s central neighborhoods.
Kali, who lives in a small hut near the sanctuary and goes by only one name, said her young daughter and niece had both been bitten twice, requiring trips to the hospital and expensive vaccinations. After being attacked while bathing, she now asks her husband to stand guard when she washes. And for a poor family like hers, the Trayvons are a constant threat in more ways than one.
“I give them my leftovers like roti,” she said. “But then they ran away with my onions.”
3 comments:
Hello again...
What you need to get tbhis site more popular [like kunstlers and others]
is to make it possible for posters to 'reply' to posts..
kunstler sometimes gets 1000+ commnets a week
Wait, what do you mean tell me more: aren't posters able to reply to posts the way this site is set up?
- Artur
Mort de rire! Nicely done. And this:
Roopi Saran, a Delhi resident, has seen Trayvons steal candy from the hands of her children. And tribes of Trayvons often take over her yard, preventing her and her children from venturing outside.
“So we sit inside our house like caged animals, like we’re the ones in the zoo and they’re the owners outside looking at us,” Ms. Saran said.
has to hit a bit close to home for those in the U.S unfortunate enough to live in particularly 'vibrant' neighborhoods.
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