An absence immediately strikes: there are no voices of children playing, their cries. The croaking of crows and the cries of seagulls flying high over the trees can be heard. For the rest, silence. Inside the park of Monte Urpinu, Cagliari, in the late afternoon of the first Sunday of isolation after the discovery of an outbreak of avian flu that led the ASL to decide to kill all the birds in the oasis on the hill.
Outside, on the side of Via Pietro Leo, two hundred demonstrators protest for what they call a "massacre". Inside, calm and desolation. But the birds are still there. Those who for now have escaped the fatal, for them, health campaign.
A group of peacocks - twelve specimens died from the flu - paw along the steep slope of the hill that slopes down to the highest lake on the promontory. The birds get close. They are not afraid. Perhaps because they do not keep the memory of what happened to their fellowmen, only the day before, at the hands of the men of the veterinary service.
The passages from the paths are closed by red and white tapes. The same ones who settle down to delimit the scene of a crime.
The aviaries are empty. The birdseed remained in the bowls. Soon there will be no more animals to eat it. Here and there there are feathers on the ground. They have always been there, but today they give the impression of having fallen after a violent act.
About twenty ducks swim in the body of water closest to the playground. At the sight of the intruder they approach: they seem to be waiting for a loaf of bread. They don't know that feeding them is forbidden, as written on numerous signs scattered around. But it is obvious that more than someone has done so recently.
Towards via Vidal here are the hens. They too are at risk of contagion. They peck quietly as the sun turns orange with sunset. For them it could be the last. The veterinary service did not work on Sunday. The final solution could be postponed until Monday. Today.