A fox on the tracks! This Friday February 7 at 8:45 am, station Liberté, travelers on line 8 can't believe their eyes. And yet it is a cousin of a goupil, in the flesh, who crosses their path in the metro. The appearance led to a slowdown in traffic for almost two hours a few dozen meters from the Bois de Vincennes.
If the fox from the Liberté station has not been found, we know that a few dozen specimens thus live in the capital, notably in Maubert (Ve), Invalides (VIIe), Champ-de-Mars (VIIe) or even near the cemetery of Montmartre (18th century), sometimes making a tour in this huge burrow that represents the metro.
Harmless animals
In the underground of the metro and on the rails of the RER and Transilien, it is a real fauna which agitates, particularly at night when the trains are stopped: rats, martens, crickets or bats, animals do not lack. If they can cause slowdowns by nibbling on cables or by forming their nest on a power pylon, no reason to cry wolf however: the wild animals of the metro remain harmless.
"It is not inconsistent that foxes use the tunnels to find themselves in the metro, they are quite nomadic, unlike humans, they are not afraid of the dark and are quite opportunistic: they go where they find food ”, explains Vincent Vignon, ecologist at the Office of Ecological Engineering and author of a census of foxes in the capital. But if they venture into the capital, the naturalists have seen no trace of reproduction of goupils, who prefer the woods.
In 1995, the fatal cricket strike
These basement beasts also sometimes bring a little poetry to the metro. The ancients of lines 3 and 9 still remember it before, crickets sang underground, but they disappeared 25 years ago. The musical insects had been introduced from North Africa by bakers, who imported flour and cereals into which they nestled. Driven little by little by the disappearance of bread ovens, they took refuge in the subway, at the temperature, warmer than in the open air. According to Frédéric Malher, regional delegate of the League for the Protection of Birds in Île-de-France (LPO), they mainly fed on cigarette butts, made of cotton and tobacco.
The 1995 strike got the better of them! Due to a lack of passengers and travel, the underground temperature dropped and trash became rarer for several weeks. At the end of the social conflict, the population of crickets was decimated. The ban on smoking in the metro did the rest, removing one of their livelihoods: cigarette butts.
Rats, a risk for electrical cables
As for the rats, they continue to populate the underground passages and represent a real scourge. Each year, they are the subject of an eradication campaign organized by the RATP. The objective is to avoid the proliferation of rodents, which can attack electrical cables and cause significant delays. Small white sacks of rat dead are scattered throughout the network.
A deratization which makes jump the association Animals Zoopolis Paris which ensures that they are not especially carriers of disease and has even led a campaign to rehabilitate them.
More aggressive against electrical installations, a few dozen martens were spotted in Paris right up to the National Assembly. Despite their size which can reach up to 80 cm long, they are discreet and rare. They also like to sneak underground where they find rubber to snack on,
Dogs and cats allowed under conditions
Finally, know it, dogs and cats are now free in the Paris metro. If they are small, travelers can take them with them free of charge provided they are enclosed in a suitable bag or basket up to 45 cm long. They must neither dirty public spaces nor inconvenience other travelers.
Newsletter - The essentials of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le ParisienI'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more
For larger dogs, they are tolerated provided they are muzzled and kept on a leash ... Their owner must also pay a metro ticket to take them on the RER or metro. With the exception, however, of guide dogs for the blind who can travel for free and without a muzzle.
READ ALSO> In New York, dogs can no longer take the subway without being in a bag
