Nihilistic and crazed, Cocaine Bear is zoological zeitgeist for these end times | Bidisha Mamata

A drug-filled beast and an ennui-prone alligator sum up 21st-century life, but at least Flaco the owl is a positive role model

I'll be first in line to watch Cocaine Bear, the new film based on a 1985 true story about a bear in Tennessee who snuffled a stash of drug smugglers' cocaine and went into a deep-fried southern frenzy. Why Hollywood waited nearly 40 years to dramatise this is beyond me, but come 2023, Cocaine Bear is all of us: nihilistic, crazed, hypervigilant and doomed.

Other animals are role-modelling alternative attitudes to these end times. Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who escaped from New York's Central Park zoo, is living his best life. Despite being raised in captivity, he's been hunting by night and visiting the park's skating rink like a sanguine Manhattan flaneur.