"For food for the animals. Thank you."
Walking down Nevsky Prospect yesterday, I came across two terriers holding buckets in their mouths, on which was written “For a big sausage.” Passersby were going apeshit tossing change in the buckets, taking their photograph with the dogs and doing other such disgustingly banal things. The dogs’ handler stood a few feet away, quietly collecting change from the buckets whenever there was a break in the action.
Making money off homeless animals is a chronic problem in St. Petersburg, where folks known as “korobochki” (from the word for “box,” “korobka”) have a very lucrative racket worked out. For a small fee, they accept unwanted animals into their care, then display them on the street, often in cardboard boxes, and collect money to supposedly feed them.
What actually happens, according to the testimony of a woman who tried to save some of these animals, is they immediately contract a variety of diseases from the motley crue of dying animals they’re placed with. The korobochki make money off them until they die from their illnesses, then cast the carcasses into an abandoned basement somewhere, not hard to find in St. Petersburg.
And the korobochki get defensive when anyone tries to intervene in their business. “Massive fistfights” almost ended a protest against the practice outside Metro Station “Ydel’naya” last week when korobochki tried to force the picketers out of the square, according to the local daily “Metro.”
There’s similar abuse of animals at the outdoor pet market, writes Tatyana Tihomirova, the same animal crusader who tried to save animals she bought from a korobochnik. At the end of the week, a fellow comes around with a box collecting those animals who won’t make it through the next week or just aren’t in “vendible condition.” Then he tapes up the box and disposes of it at the dump.
The dog-handler on Nevsky wasn’t the most egregious example of korobochkinism — he had at least invested the time to train his dogs to hold the buckets. Nevertheless, it was a sorrier spectacle than the bum I once saw in San Francisco, raking in the bucks from photo-snapping tourists with a cardboard sign labeled “For beer.” With the dogs on Nevsky, I wouldn’t even have the small satisfaction of knowing my spare change was helping some poor soul drink himself to peaceful oblivion.
Those strolling down Nevsky should be holding their change until they reach the homeless men on Ploschad Vosstaniya, where a dead bum was laying in the sidewalk the other day. Alleviate human suffering first.
Besides, there’s no real way to help these animals. Donated money will go to grease the palms of the korobochniki, and if you buy some of their animals off them, they’ll just die from the infections they’ve already contracted. Of the 12 cats Tihomirova bought, only three survived, despite three months and $2,000 of intensive care.
Tags: Коробочники, Удельная, Homeless, Metro, Nevsky Prospect, St. Petersburg
