Elephants, Cheetahs and more....

Yesterday, there was a surprise visitor at our institute….a monkey!!! There are numerous coconut and mango laden trees in the vicinity to entice it …so it just ambled along. Speaking about our fellow animal friends, on my way to work, I often come across elephants (domesticated of course). The ‘jumbos’ have been rendered jobless post the ban on timber felling. So in the morning, if one is fortunate, one can actually get to see these huge creatures with their mahouts maneuvering through the rush hour traffic, looking for work. They are seldom seen alone, they are either in pairs or sometimes the entire family (usually a tusker, a medium sized one and a small one) are seen trudging bravely on the hot asphalt. They draw stares (more of adoration than anything else) wherever they go. More often than not, people on the wayside offer them some food….bananas are a top favourite but it includes fruits, vegetables as well as leafy plants…..after all, since the elephants are a permanent fixture in the Indian pantheon as the beloved Ganesha, no one can resist the temptation to make offerings and appease the symbol of the deity.

Yet this ban has had a telling effect on their upkeep. Elephants are an expensive proposition in terms of its maintenance and daily sustenance. Considering their size, they eat massive portions of food and unless one is capable of providing that and also providing for its medical expenses, it is impossible to take care of them. In fact, in parts of Upper Assam, elephants (with their mahouts of course) have been compelled to go from door to door begging for food/ money. Quite sad actually!!!

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The past couple of days, I’ve been watching programs on Animal Planet. One of those days I came across a program called “Mad Mike and Mark” where Mike and Mark made their way through an African Safari park capturing Cheetahs on their cameras. A rather remarkable thing was shown in that episode. My mother who was watching the episode swears that it was morphed but I think it was otherwise. Basically they showed Mike n Mark on an open roof jeep amidst a pride of cheetahs. As they continued filming them, one cheetah jumped up on the vehicle and sat on it, taking that as a vantage point to spot its prey….while Mike and Mark stood close by filming. If that was not enough, lo and behold, the cheetah came real close to one of them (couldn’t figure out if it was Mike/ Mark), sniffed it and licked his bald head…..man oh man…that was quite something I must say!! My mother thinks it was morphed…but I choose to disagree with her. I mean the cheetahs are not dumb (they are thinking , calculating creatures), maybe that particular cheetah realized that the 2 Ms were harmless and so they could be just be ignored or perhaps…better still… it was not hungry , ‘full to its gills’ as the saying goes!!! I don’t know what the truth is, but I wouldn’t want to believe that the people in Animal Planet would air a morphed show!!!

The other program I watched was one called “Lyndal’s Lifeline” (I hope I’ve got the spelling correctly). The particular episode showed the release of orphaned elephants (taken care of by people in a special facility) into the wild in Sri Lanka. An interesting thing aired on the show, was that of a special home for the aged and infirm elephants in Sri Lanka. The program showed how such elephants were given a good scrub (with a coconut husk) to exfoliate their dead skin, scrape the dead cells from their feet and if that was not enough….give them a good hot massage with herbs J J !!! I’m sure they loved it …….
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