Almaty - packs of stray dogs, catching cats and rats

Almaty. 08/24/2019. I'll warn you right off the bat - I'm not a supporter of animal cruelty. I am an extreme opponent of this. And here I want to talk a little about the situation with homeless animals in Almaty - how it really is, how the authorities behave and how ordinary citizens react.

As we all know, in order to make bike paths, a tram was destroyed in Almaty... bicycles were rented everywhere. Buses are equipped with electronic means of payment. All, or most, institutions have switched to service by numbers that a smart device gives you. We have an electronic government - however, no matter where you poke - nothing works ... We will soon transfer all utility bills from paper receipts to Internet payments, or payment through terminals - however, not a single official even thought for a second, but how or the elderly? After all, they will not be able to do it ... But on the other hand - we have it like in Europe and America! At the level. We are ahead of the planet! Digital Kazakhstan - alga!

Okay, let, no matter what the child is amused by ... Let them puff out their cheeks, and think that this is where all progress lies. And if you have a "Bentley" - you, they say, automatically join the ranks of individuals, with some highly developed value. Funny.

Look around! What is around you? Or do you think: we are here temporarily - soon to London, to Paris ... forever?

Let's not talk about everything, now about animals. But here everything is running down... while you are puffing out your cheeks with swagger, Almaty is more and more reminiscent of a city of the Middle Ages. If anyone is not in the know, I give a historical background: in the Middle Ages, both in the East and in Europe, cities were not only dirty, but also dangerous. At night, heavily armed guards walked the streets of the cities and rattled with all they could. And it was not only the robbers alone, but also the packs of feral dogs. These packs resembled wolves, only they were not afraid of people, and on occasion they attacked. Some cities had separate areas that people left because of this threat. Only rats were scarier than these dogs.

Already in our time, the infamous "death squadrons" that sowed terror in the poor neighborhoods of Latin American cities, rounded up packs of feral city dogs, so to speak - at the same time. Guns, machine guns, and even grenades were used. And everything is useless.

Now Almaty in many ways resembles these nightmarish scenes. I move around the city a lot, mostly by bike. And very often you have to get off the bike, and hiding behind it, quietly pass by this or that pack of dogs - because it's scary. I have already been attacked by dogs when I was riding a bike - I can’t tear myself away from them... well, so far it has ended with a couple of torn jeans, and light scratches, and there was one bite.

A lot of dogs, according to tradition in the private sector - this is, as it were, understandable. But there are many dogs in prestigious parts of the city. I received a bite from one dog in the Orbit microdistrict, just below Al-Farabi / Navoi Avenue. However, there are always a lot of stray dogs in Orbit. Toli they go to the mountains for the summer, where thousands of restaurants, cafes, barbecue houses and so on have been built up to the Big Almaty Lake and towards Almarasan - they have something to profit from there. And in the fall, they migrate back to the city ... and everyone passes through the Orbit. A good friend of mine lives there, he sees and hears all this every day: continuous furious barking of dogs (the parking lot is nearby), and from time to time the screams of cats torn apart by dogs ... Sometimes it’s scary to take out the garbage in the trash - there are about seven or eight hefty and growl.

Of course, the city authorities are fighting these packs, but to be honest, this word should be enclosed in quotation marks - "fight". All that our advanced Kazakhstan, constantly striving to become on the same level with the developed world powers, can is to catch and kill homeless, stray, orphan animals. You can say "to put to sleep", or you can say "with a hammer on the head", the essence of this does not change...

However, there are some nuances here. A captured dog pays the most, a cat pays the least, and picking up carcasses pays very little. According to these Rules - all the dead for one reason or another, homeless animals, must be "utilized" so to speak, precisely by these same services. But where did you see it?

It is difficult to catch dogs - you have to run after them, and who will keep up with the dog? It is necessary to hire masters of sports, sprinters! Well, yes, on the central streets they have to pick up dead dogs and cats ... But in all other parts of the city - spin as you like! Let your basement stink of dead meat for at least a year - no one from these dashing traps will climb into the basement.

So there are only cats left. Cats are much easier to catch - I threw a piece of raw meat, and after five minutes, clap with a net, now two or three cats have been caught! Another five minutes - the next ones are caught. And catching kittens is generally nonsense! In an hour or two, you can catch all the cats in the entire yard. Try chasing dogs like that! In an instant, the fat will fly off the belly.

Another rotten practice - if someone is bitten somewhere by dogs, and this causes a noise, misters traps will immediately arrive and will catch both dogs and cats. Although the cases when cats have bitten someone are generally rare. But the statistics of other cities (I don’t know if there is such a thing in Almaty) show that in the city of Volgograd more than 200 thousand people who were bitten by dogs go to the hospital every year, and only 5-6 cases of cat bites ... this should be about say something? Must. But he doesn't speak. Officials, apparently, have a completely abstract mindset (I said this so beautifully that they would not be taken as an insult).

So what to do? Work. Throughout the civilized community (it should be emphasized), one or another version of a simple scheme for regulating the number of homeless animals is working: trapping, vaccination, sterilization and release to the place of their former habitat. Of course, there are nuances - sick, infectious, aggressive individuals are euthanized. The latter applies specifically to dogs. Neutered animals are usually marked so as not to be recaptured - for example, the edge of the ear is cut.

There are opponents of this scheme, but so far there is no other humane alternative. Building and maintaining nurseries is a utopia. A dog can live for 14 years, cats live for 20 years - all this time keeping an animal in a nursery cage is neither humane nor affordable for any state.

Practice shows that even experimental, selective sterilization of animals gives a tangible effect and in a relatively short time allows you to control the number of homeless animals.

Of course, if the state, represented by a conditional official, wants to destroy all homeless animals, this will result in unpredictable consequences. One way or another, a person is forced to live with his companions. China and its notorious fight against sparrows should have taught the authorities at least something. Taught? I doubt.

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