Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M.Krishnan : THE OUTLAW : The Sunday Statesman : 19 January 2020
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THE OUTLAW
( DHOLE )


"EVERYONE knows the Wolf of the fable which, seeking justification for killing it, blamed the kid drinking downstream with fouling the water.

Somewhat similarly, men who have invaded their immemorial homes and brought the jungle and scrub under the plough kill the wild animals, from the field-rat to the elephant, on the grounds that they are crop-raiders - the larger harbivores and the carnivores of course, constitute a menace to humanity or might do so, and so must be shot down. It is ironic that with these justifications for killing wild animals sustained over many generations in our country the only creature on whose head a general government reward was set was a beast that never has caused man's crop any damage, or caused him harm in any other way.

Actually the reward was paid not on the production of the head but of the brush of the Dhole popularly miscalled "Wild Dog" though it is much more distantly related to the domestic dog than the Wolf and the Jackal. Stray cases of Dhole killing domestic calves have been reported, but from diligent inquiry of herdsmen in places like Moyar border in the Western Ghats, Periyar in Kerala, west Chanda in Maharashtra and Mandla in Kanha, where both Dhole and cattle are common, I am satisfied that the killing of domestic stock by these predators is so rare that it can safely be ignored as factor provoking reprisals. Being through going carnivores, Dhole do not raid crops, and they have never been known to attack men. Why, then, were they singled out for being proscribed as vermin and a general reward being offered for their destruction?

The reason is plain to see, though it has not been specified by anyone so far. In the days of Sahiblog,Shikar was the one great solace and pastime of white men bearing their tropical burden in India, and quite a few Indians were (and still are) dedicated to the pastime. To shoot deer, buck and other "game animals" was (and is) the consuming passion of these noble sportsmen, especially those of them employed in the Indian Army and political services, and when the reach their favourite hunting grounds after week of strenuous preparations and eager anticipation, they sometime found the game sparse and fugitive because hunting Dhole had been in the field ahead of them. Later in this note, I shall return to the point, but the general belief is that when dhole enter a forest, the herbivores quit the area in a body. Now this was insufferable, an unlicensed rival hunting game in the hunts of these sportsmen and, worse still, doing it more efficiently. So the Dhole was proscribed.

Everywhere, in every period, men have sought pious, or at least plausible, justification for their capital decrees, and the reason given for outlawing the Dhole was that these pestilent predators would, unless kept sternly in check, kill off the beautiful deer and the other beautiful game-animals. Further, the mode of hunting practiced by Dhole was condemned, anthropomorphically as cruel and inhuman, and this provided an added excuse for their slaughter.

There is no need to argue the point tediously. Two self-evident and conclusive facts will suffice to prove my point. First, for thousands of years before sportsmen came forward to save the game (their game) from the hated predator, deer and other herbivores and Dhole have co-existed in India without any dwindling of the population of the former. Second, only men, and no other predators, have been responsible (intentionally or otherwise) for the rapid, large-scale decline of the wild flora and fauna, both here and abroad.

True that Dhole do tear down their quarry and consume it piecemeal as they chase it, but they cannot hunt animals much larger than themselves any other way. A big Dhole weighs some 18 kg. and Chital, Pig and Sambar (their main prey) weigh from three to twelve times as much. On two occasions have closely watched Dhole killing, an adult Chital stag once and an adult Sambar hind the other time and in both instances the victim died in a few seconds, though its true that its death was brought about by many tearing mouths.

Tribal hunters who use nooses and hooks hidden in baits to kill deer and antelopes, inflict much greater and longer agony on their victims, and we are certainly right in prohibiting such cruel forms of hunting by our brethren, but it is not for us to try, anthropomorphically, to be wiser and more merciful than nature, and to take sided and interfere with the balance of nature. But for Dhole, Chital and Pig would have over-run the land in many tracts, and brought about the end of herbivores by exhausting the fodder, for example in the Masinagudi area of the Mudumalai sanctuary.

I have seen deer grazing un-concernedly while a party of Dhole trotted past -- more to the point, this indifference of the prey to the dreaded predator on occasion has been recorded by some of the old time shikaris, by the very men who built up the governmental prejudice against the Dhole. Of course it is true that much oftener the prey do panic and scatter when hunting Dhole arrive on the scene, but their fight is only temporary and only to areas immediately around where, probably, there is better cover. when not breeding, Dhole are much given to wandering over considerable territory in packs and frequently shift their hunting grounds, and if everywhere their prey abandoned their homes and escaped from them, the Dhole would have died of starvation long ago and the prey have no homes left. Moreover, having exquisite noses and hunting their quarry mainly by ground-scent, tiring it out over a long chase by virtue of their superior stamina and not by superior speed, Dhole should have no difficulty in escaping prey, and flight per se does not insure a better chance of survival to the prey. Finally, all close observers must have noticed that while the presence does panic and scatter the bprey, they do not leave the area en masse.

Even today, even in sanctuaries where all the animals are supposed to be protected, men kill or try to kill Dhole on sight I have seen sanctuary officials going after Dhole with a loaded rifle in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Mysore. The cause of conservation is not helped, bu only handicapped, by such partisan and traditionally implanted prejudices# in those who have the running of our sanctuaries."

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 03 June 1973

# Such prejudices are no longer permitted in National Parks and Tiger Reserves now.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : The Cat that almost was : M.Krishnan : The Sunday Statesman : 23 Feb 2020
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The Cat that almost was
(SMALL INDIAN CIVET)

TWO months ago, I ate a variety of mango sedulously cultivated in the Deccan, in far away Madhya Pradesh. No one knows how and why these local fancies and preferences spread out centrifugally across the country.

And it what was the vogue in ratters in Anantapur a hundred years ago had extended to rest of India, we would have few cats in our homes. We would have CIVET-CATS, instead

Even only 25 years ago, when I was living in the Deccan and kept dogs and milch-goats and racing homers, a kindly old lady who lived next door used to deplore my taste in pets. We lived from harvest to harvest in those days, and stored grains and pulses and gram for the year in enormous earthen-ware jars as tall as man - and naturally we had to be on our guard against rats. My neighbour conceded the utility of my goats, but was critical of my dogs and pigeons and the dogs, perversely were very fond of her "What good are these big clumsy dogs?" she would ask. "they are much too large to follow a rat through drains and narrow passages and a rat has only to climb up to a shelf to be safe from them. Why don't you have the wits to get yourself a Civet-Cat? With a Civet in the house you need never to be bothered with rats".

Then she would tell me of her younger days and how she like many others there, kept Civets to keep the house free of rats. She assured me that taken in hand young, a Civet can safely be given the run of the house and would not run away when grown as a Mongoose will. It was lean, quiet and affectionate, and peerless as a ratter. The trouble was getting it in the first place: if only young Civets were as easily available as kittens, no one would keep cats.

I have no personal experience of keeping Civets, but can well understand their exceptional qualifications as useful and dependable pets - it is the small Indian Civet that I am writing of, of course. Years ago, a wilder and more nocturnal creature, a Palm-Civet, took up residence in the many layered tile of my kitchen roof, and lived there for years till the old roof collapsed and was replaced with a concrete slab.

Somehow, the potential of the Civet as a valuable and arrestingly attractive domestic animal does not seem to have been investigated outside the Deccan and the surrounding tracts. In the old days, before synthetic perfumes were produced in such profusion, Civets were kept in barrow, barred cages, for the sake of the secretion from their subcaudal glands which was scraped off and refined into scent, Civet. This was valued not only for its perfume, but also for its alleged therapeutic virtue. But the Civet-Cat was seldom kept and prized as a pet. Zeuner does not even mention it in his History of Domesticated Animals.

By nature,Civets are less strictly carnivorous than cats, and feed on variety of things - insects,grubs,crustaceans,birds when they can catch them, and such reptiles and small mammals as they can overpower, and also many wild fruits and even, I suspect, some tubers. A captive specimen I used to know was fond of bananas. Obviously such an omnivorous animal is not hard to feed and rear, and since it tends to stay where it grew up, returning home even if occasionally it goes away on a voyage of discovery, a Civet shall be easy to keep and can be given the run of the house instead of being cooped up in a cage. and it is not an animal that is demanding and wants to be noticed and petted from time to time, like some other domestic pets.

I have watched Civets hunting in the grass and shallow puddles of the borders of a lake; frogs, perhaps crabs, and insects were what they were obviously hunting. I have seen them eating the fruit of Carisa, and even of a Lantana, and other small jungle berries. Once I saw a Civet up a jamun tree that was in fruit; Civets can certainly climb trees if the want to, but I do not know whether it had climbed the tree for the ripe fruit, or for some other reason. It saw me when I saw it, climb down the tree, and made off."

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 26 August 1973
#The painting of a small Indian Civet has not been reproduced here.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. KRISHNAN : An in-between Bird : The Sunday Statesman ; 16 February 2020
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COUCAL


" THE COUCAL belongs to the Cuckoo tribe : it is one of those ground-cuckoos that do not foist their eggs on other birds, but laboriously build nests and hatch and their young. It is quite a common bird, being found both in forests and in countryside, and even in cities where there are trees and bushes, and it is by no means inconspicuous, a big blackbird the size of a crow, with a heavy corvine bill and a long, broad tail with the back and rounded wings alone chestnut.

The name by which it is known to many people, CROW PHEASANT, reflects both its long tail and addiction to ground cover. Not that it walks easily, as a pheasant does: it is much more at home in trees, but it is often to be found in low bushes and even on ground, and given to hiding in bush cover. But even when when it is hiding, its low booking voice gives it away.

In spite of being so common, most people hardly seem to know it.They have the oddest notions about it, and think it is some sort of crow not much given to flying. People will believe anything you may tell them about it - I myself believed that it is a lucky omen to see a Coucal when setting out to do anything. It is an "age-old superstition" entirely of my own manufacture, and in places where I established it 30 years ago, they now tell me this is an immemorial traditional belief!

Perhaps the oddest thing said about the bird by one of our official wildlife experts, when I was showing a party of foreigners (one of whom is a knowledgeable ornithologist) around a sanctuary. A Coucal happened to fly across the forest road ahead of their jeep, and the expert, wishing to impress his guests, turned solemnly to them: " That is the only endemic pheasant known in South India" he informed them, " and its modification is still a mystery".

But of course its nesting is no mystery. It builds a big, rounded nest deep inside a bush or a bamboo clump, and hunt painstakingly for grasshoppers and other plump insects with which to feed its young. Apparently, such insects stripped off the chitinous limbs and other hard parts are both digestible and nourishing- even the grain-loving finches feed their nestlings on such prey.

As bird-watchers keen on garden birds know, the Coucal is a voracious and omnivorous feeder. It lives on fruits, such insect or reptilian prey as it can catch, and eggs and young of other and smaller birds - it is an inveterate nest-robber.

Its call is a deep, sonorous, repeated hoot, which Dewar compares to the voices of some owls, but I do not think there is much in common - owls have less less sonorous and metallic hoots, and to my ear the call nearest the Coucal's is no bird voice but the joyous, early morning hoop of the langur, though of course the two are once distinguishable.

There is the only call of the bird you will find recorded in textbooks, but it has another and more private voice for intimate occasions. Waiting for a sambar stag in a primitive but more effective hide out a mango tree, I had the privilege of eavesdropping on a pair of Coucals seated on a branch just below me. They sat in close company, and indulged in a low, guttural conversation, punctuated with side way tilts of their heads, a muttering irresistibly reminiscent of two querulous old men grumbling together! They must have been a courting pair, I think, and what I overheard was their whispered sweet nothings to each other! "

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 19 August 1973