In 2014 , the Brown Bat population of Nova Scotia was decimated by “white nose fungus”; 95% of the population was wiped out and even since have been making a modest recovery, what one scientist called a “small r recovery. At the same time, I read about incidents in Australia where mysteriously , bats were falling from the sky, dead. At the time I did a Painting of the fallen bats.
This painting , which I had forgotten about in storage came to mind when I was reading about the Wuhan Markets that were selling ( secretly ) endangered Pangolins , that might have been infected with Covid-19 through the bite of a bat. Americans were railing against the Chinese for “eating bats” ,even though many in the rural areas eat squirrels and opossum. The Pangolin, which resembles an armadillo , also eaten in the Southwest, has been called an artichoke on four legs because one eats the scales. Perhaps a future painting

Addendum: April 1

Story in the New York Times indicating that researchers are casting doubt on the Pangolin’s role in the current pandemic.

• 

• 

We share the world with animals. They were the first subject of art. As John Berger has written they were the first “other”, worshipped, bred and sacrificed but in the modern world animals have become marginalized. Still, every so often we understand that we have made the planet inhabitable to life, and that while they are different they are also similar-they breathe, bleed and die like us. Berger called this the first existential “Duality”. They are subject to the same stresses of Climate Change and Viruses and chemical pollution. In recent years, pigs have floated down rivers, bats have fallen from the skies, bees have died mass deaths and dogs and wild boars with high concentrations of radiation have appeared. Once a Wise teacher asked me “What animal have we helped?”He didn’t expect an answer , I have none, except, perhaps like the ancestors, to honour their “presence”.

.

• 

•