Keep a watchful eye on the helpless.

Today we read about the abduction of a four-day-old baby from the living room of his house by a wild monkey. It fled with the baby up the roof, bit the baby and dropped it to the ground where it died.

Such incidents may be rare but the possibility of it happening is always present. Nowadays, animals and humans present a danger to the helpless. There are always humans ready to pounce to profit from whatever is available. There are always desperate people who may just be looking for the opportunity to get hold of a few ringgit. As for the monkeys, their foraging area is getting smaller as man move further into the outskirts to develop areas which was once jungle, the home of monkeys and wild animals.

Up the hill near Taman Semarak where I have my daily exercise, more and more monkeys are seen, taking the fruits on the trees in that area. When the fruits are all gone, I wonder where they are going to get their food. With food exhausted, what would these monkeys do? They would venture into housing estates to get fruits planted by the residents and when those are no longer sufficient, hunger might drive them into kitchens and houses. So, the monkey which went into that infant's living room could have been searching for its much needed food and found the poor helpless 'creature' a possible meal. The cries of the infant upon being bitten could have frightened it to release him/her to have him/her fall all the way down to the ground.

It is time we think of the monkeys and other animals which have been deprived of their habitat. There must be some kind of plan to give sufficient space for them. We ought not to be too greedy, thinking only of humans only. In fact there are buildings that are not fully utilised. Do we really need those buildings. Perhaps some of the building could be built with multi-purposes in mind. Whatever it is, we should think of the animals which are also creations of God and make sure they have a place under our sun.