The four legged dish washers!

The kitchen in Mundanthurai is well known for three things. The head cook- Manoharan, edible food (sometimes good by mistake) and a unique system of doing the dishes. It is hard for someone to believe that such a remote god forsaken place has a dishwasher to do the dishes. Yes, a mobile one that comes for free at that!
The Inspection Bunglow area is home to many bonnet monkeys in the day and a couple of pigs at night. These starved pesky monkeys have been the subject of numerous researchers in the past as they are very easy to observe and the researcher need not have to get bitten by ticks and leeches and risk life in going after these primates looking at what they do. All the monkeys in the area are in Mundanthurai for a certain time in a day and all one has to do in order to study them is get a flask of hot coffee, a chair, a cigar, a book and a pen; sit under a tree and life goes on as good as ever. May be binoculars to make closer observations and that’s it!

I am not, however sure if someone has worked on the wild pigs like with that of monkeys.
The guests residing in the Bunglow and dormitory come three times a day to eat or rather relish with difficulty and appreciate the culinary skills of the kitchen team. The primates appear almost instantaneously out of nowhere as if they were conditioned by the experiments of Ivan Pavlov, the Russian Noble laureate in Psychology who discovered classical conditioning. They seem to know, that when humans come to the kitchen, there is food for the picking and the whole horde pitches camp at ease, as if they got all the time on earth. Sometimes the really hungry ones look at humans and make faces, some try to jump on the plate itself and a few more males try to bully the humans by snarling and grunting! But some, the somber ones, wait for the better evolved kin to finish and drop the plates at the tap. Then, there is no stopping. They go haywire and take plates, lick them clean, snatch, throw, play Frisbee and do what not with the plates. They get the food, the dishes get scrubbed.

With the dusk taking over, the wild pigs come in families of 4-5. They grunt snort and run around too. But they are not the kinds who wait patiently looking at humans to finish. They evolved separately and have no respect for the line of evolution as with monkeys! For the pigs, humans are no superior. When all the humans are gone and the kitchen is locked, the drama continues. The pigs come and lick clean the plates. Whatever little food gets stuck on the plate gets eaten by them.

All this, made Manoharan and crew to order the guests to rinse the plates once they finish eating and leave the plate for them to clean it again with soap. This is to prevent the loss of plates due to monkeys misplacing them. The new rule has very well come into existence and the monkeys no longer wait for guests to drop plates but boldly try and snatch things form the plate itself! This gave Manoharan the job of chasing the monkeys with a stout stick, always kept at easy reach for this sole purpose.
Whether the dishes are cleaned with soap later as claimed or not? Nobody knows. It is a question not to be asked but to be assumed. After all, the dishwashers did a neat job right?

Prayer of a Tailed Cousin

This is a story that happened some time back in the forests of Mundanthurai. For those who are not aware of Lord Sori, I shall say that he being in forest is more of a curse to forest creatures than a blessing.

He attracts up to half a million people to come into the forest and worship him.

 The people come there also to meet people and get marriage proposals and all that.

Similarly, the better cousins what we call the Bonnet macaques also come there to see their bad cousins- humans.

They come to meet their own kind and also to eat on what the bad cousin throws out as waste,

in forms of plastic, plantain leaves, rice and

even sacrificed goats!

Like their cousins, they too have to sleep in the night, and what do they do? They go to the temple and sleep above their bad cousins. Only the tail hangs down like vines in a forest. In day time, the tailed ones gang up and scour the forest for food and fight among themselves.

The tail less ones gather around and worship god, cook food and eat, sleep and make merry- for only once a year can they come and relax in the cool waters of Tambaraparani.

The poor man’s Jacuzzi.

One day, an old and concerned member of the tailed ones came to Mundanthurai Kitchen. It came to look up at the better cousins- Ecologists; for they were the only ones to share their concern with him. He was feeling bad that the cousins of his were destroying the forest. What could he do alone? His members left him and went to eat the waste thrown by their cousins. 

His self esteem was hurt. They were free beings of the earth; their order did not allow eating of waste thrown by others.

He wanted to end all this. So he came to us. Seeing us, he began to feel proud. He noticed that the ecologists worked very hard. They all looked green, brown and dirty, slept very little, and always roamed the forests looking for the relatives of the jungle world. They were always talking about the bad things due to Lord Sori.

He looked deep into himself on the wind shield of the jeep.

 At the same time, he wanted to pray to his cousins to stop the nuisance and let the jungle denizens live in peace. So he climbed over the jeep. The ecologists now began to see him. They did seem to understand the talk of all beings. He looked up at heaven and read the words Ecology and Conservation. He knew that he was close to ending all this. He wanted more people to support him, his noble cause. At the same time, he wanted to pray to his cousins to stop the nuisance and let the jungle denizens live in peace.

They silently saw. He bowed his head, asked Lord Sori to forgive him for what he was doing against the lord.

Then looked up at the heavens, thanked his stars for having found us.

Then he looked at the direction of temple and sat silent. He did not speak for he knew that his human cousins had alienated themselves form nature and would not understand their mother tongue.

He kept staring and we understood what he meant. He then began to weep. He felt miserable. He could not even drink water in the Tambaraparani River. This was the river where he grew up, had fun and frolic with his mother and brothers. They were all now gone; disillusioned by the free food they got from the degenerated cousins.

Sobbing, he looked up, met eyes. Both of us had nothing to say. Each understood the deep feelings of the other. The ecologists realized what the pain was. They wanted to cure it. He got some what reassured.

His sorrow now seemed to have lessened after weeping. His heart was light. He began to become normal again. He wanted to run. Something held him back. He was convinced we would do something. Something to help him.

He looked up again at the words Ecology and Conservation written on their vehicle. His heart became lighter than ever.

He looked up at us. Saw that we were equally concerned. He seemed to ask us if we would stand by our word. Deep inside, he could hear the reverberating yes. And with that, he jumped and vanished into the forest. We never saw him again.

 

This was a story, a story of a primate, looking up at their long lost relatives for help. Help- to make their world a better place. For him. For us. For all. For generations to come.

PS: The characters featured in the story are purely fictional. No relation to persons alive, dying or dead should be made. Any similarities seen by the expert eye are purely co-incidental and are the result of the handiwork of the devil’s kitchen of empty minds. 

All photographs are by Seshadri.K.S, please request permission before using any of it.

Please note, on a serious note, I have tried to Build a story based on some pictures I had. The story is clearly cooked up but the issue is real. I have no Intention of making fun of the pilgrims or the ecologists quoted here and it has been written so in light sense of humor. Enjoy reading!

Bright lights, loud horns, bold animals and insensitive glorified apes

Loud honking and over speeding by motorists are things banned in certain countries but in India, only the exact opposite seems to work. Some motorists have succumbed to the Periodic unnecessary honking syndrome (PUHS) and do this all the time. May be they will continue to do the same if put on a plane too! And not just that, they are rash and insensitive while driving about. This has led to many accidents and even communal wars in the past. This same insensitive attitude towards a fellow being gets automatically carried on even when they are driving in the forest areas. 

Traffic stopped for easy movement- pic seshadri

Firstly, there should not be public vehicles plying in forests but this cannot be helped and thus measures to reduce the impacts should be in place. This does not seem to be the concern of anybody. Vehicles inside a forest are a nuisance and one must witness the annual Influx of vehicles during the SMK festival in KMTR. The number of vehicles plying on the road are, simply put- astronomical. With local pressures, the roads are thrown open for pilgrims to enter the reserve at night and this, adds to the existing problem of road kills, pollution, dust and other effects. The people in rented or own vehicles will be in a maddening frenzy to reach the temple camping grounds and find a spot to live for the next 10 or so days. This annual migration happens almost up to 10 days before the festival itself. The roads are re done and everything is made easy to facilitate the easy movement of vehicles. The road shoulders are packed with mud and leveled so that the road can occupy a larger volume of traffic and traffic police are put in various places to regulate the people.

The drivers always are of the boorish sort and seem to think of someone overtaking them as an insult often chasing them and blocking their path. And on the other hand, honk their heads off trying to overtake the precursor. To add to this, all most all the vehicles have blaring music which, more often than not, out of tune and being played in cheap Chinese speakers which sound no different than a donkey braying in pain. Almost all vehicles ply at high speeds and people would have hung their wet clothes, from the Agasthiyar watterpallies (read Waterfalls) all over the vehicles. This whole thing is an eyesore inside the forest. The bright light is another impeccable hand of this four wheeled assassin on the run. The lights are so bright that I sometimes think it can reach the moon!

speeding vehicle at night- pic seshadri

All this, has a large implication on the forest and its dwellers. Most of the animals are nocturnal by behavior and those that are not are also forced into moving about in the night due to the train like movement of vehicles in day. When vehicles move in the night too, the animals are left with no choice. They have to either risk themselves from getting run over, stay put in one place without moving or get used to it!

Unfortunately, my observations during the night road transects seem to suggest that the animals have picked the last strategy. This is a bad thing for wildlife. Once they get used to people, it becomes easy for one to walk right up to an animal and shoot it point blank, capture them live or just tease them for the fun of it. The animal might also get crushed by vehicles as they do not bother to run for cover. We in fact had many instances which seem to suggest that the last one seems to be occurring. Many hard to see animals like the Slender loris,Civets, Mouse deers and even Leopards are seen right next to roads and they don’t seem to bother of the hundreds of speeding vehicles. We have many times experimented with shining the lights right on to them, honking badly and revving the engines so as to see their responses and nothing seems to make them run for cover. I even walked up to a mouse deer and shot pictures in macro mode! Another mouse deer was merrily feeding along the roads even as I was shooting pictures and revving the engine badly.

Un-fazed mouse deer Pic- Seshadri

Feeding Mouse deer Pic-seshadri

People who come to the pilgrimage are of course, insensitive to all this, some of them, stop to look for animals, some purposefully increase speed and try to run over animals (and even humans, especially those doing road kill surveys!) but most of them turn a blind eye towards these things. Others do not realize that their actions have or can lead to such behavior changes in animals which will be detrimental for wildlife. They will be more prone to getting run over, caught and eaten by poachers and so on. The problem here is clearly the attitude of drivers and those who come in the vehicles. Strict measures can and should be taken to control this behavior and honking should be prohibited in the forest. The speed should be regulated so that the animals if at all take the risk to cross, will get a little more time before they get hit and die without even knowing what hit them. We need to target this attitude of people and need to work on sensitizing them to their own actions which they seem to be doing without realizing the implications of it. Until things change, the animals of the Mundanthurai plateau and many other forest of India are victims of the sorry state of human mentality.

Eyes in the forest

Just to continue from where I last left, the camera trap was brought from the field station to be set up at the place of Sambar carcass. It was about 22hrs and by the time I could mobilize a team it was 23hrs. The team consisted of myself, Allwin- who has the notorious experience of doing camera trapping for years together in some India’s best tiger habitats and Chian, the young man who came into existence within KMTR and has seen the forest and its mystifying creatures in detail and is one man who anyone would want to take into the forest given his great cheerful company, willingness to go out of the way and work hard, insult primates by gracefully climbing the tallest of trees and of course for the knowledge he has accumulated in those 2 decades he has been in the forest.
So thus we left on a bike from Mundanthurai to Kariyar where we had seen the kill to set up the trap, picking up or rather dragging Chian along from the booth near the temple to come along and set up the trap may be on a tree so that no one would steal it. We reached the path leading to the kill and began walking stealthily but at a hurried pace. In the dark night, the path seemed to be longer that in was in day and every sound we heard made us stop and listen, lest we should walk into an animal and startle them (or us?) to death. As we approached the spot of kill, we could already smell the putrefying body and we slowed the pace and almost simultaneously, I spotted a pair of brilliant greenish blue eyes, quite distant from each other staring at us from a rock behind a thin bush on the right flank of the road, just about 10m from where the kill was. I switched over from a LED to a focus beam on my headlamp but the light was way too insufficient to reveal what the animal was. By then, I had taken a couple more steps when the eyes glittered again and this time Chian saw it too and pulled me back from going any further. He snatched the headlamp from be and began to shine at the spot and there it went again! The same brilliant greenish blue eyes! Just like sapphires in the pitch dark night of the amavasya (No moon)!
We stared at the same spot for about 20 minutes looking for a glimpse of the animal but except for a few occasional glances towards us, the animal never revealed itself. It was evident that Chian was in full control of the situation and he held me and Allwin back from proceeding any further. We began discussing in whispers as to what it could have been and also contemplating of barging in further and flush the animal out. It was sure that the animal was a carnivore looking at the distance between the eyes and the low height. It was not a dog because the eyes were a little far apart and more so, the behavior of seeing us and still being there- this sheer audacity comes only for two creatures; either the tiger or the leopard. The animal was clearly weighting its options and sitting there looking at us.
My idea of going further was washed down by the other two who were with me and it was now clear that we are not proceeding further. By then, we could not see any more eye-shines form the place, and may be the animal had moved and was looking at us from elsewhere. All of a sudden Chian who had the torch jumped up and was visibly shaken! Allwin who was behind him, put his arm over Chian’s shoulder to turn the light at something and poor Chian thought it was an elephants trunk and almost died of fear!!
We were now contemplating as to what it might have been and only thing was a young tiger or an adult leopard. Both apparently have the same sort of eye shine. Allwin with his experience of dealing with tigers, said if it was indeed a transient or a young tiger, the mother might be around and if we proceed further, we would be more or less dead if it decides even to jump on us even by mistake because, on the left was a rocky dried up ravine and on the right the animal. We had to walk right thru a bush to reach the kill and this was clearly not the position which anyone would want in the middle of the night!
Reluctantly, we returned being almost sure that it was a leopard that looked at us, I also recollected the eyeshine which I had seen the previous time I saw the leopard on the road which I have written elsewhere. So we returned to go set up the camera the following morning. The next daybreak came and went in finishing the other work we had at hand and by 10am, Myself, Rajkamal and John-another jungle denizen went to the spot with the filmmakers Kiran, Nagesh and Shashi.
They were doing a film on the Sorimuthian festival and a part of it was to film the research work we did during the festival. We went and clearly saw the pugmarks and droppings of the leopard on the road and tracks of it all along the kill. The kill was half eaten and john and myself did another post mortem for the documentary. The smell had become intolerable and everyone wanted to get out of there as early as possible. I sat on the culvert and gave a few small sound bites for their documentary after them shooting the post mortem and setting of the trap. I set it up under a huge rock and covered it with leaf litter so that no passerby sets eyes on it. This whole process took us more than 3 hours to get done!

We did a lot of mock animal movement over the kill to see if it triggers the camera and moved away only after making sure of that. By evening, it started pouring and I was afraid that the camera might get water into it, so myself and Abhisheka who initially spotted the kill went to the trail from Servlar to Kariyar with the intention of checking on the trap and just as we were about to start the walk, at 17 hrs, we met a rather old gentleman, an Ex-Indian Administrative Service officer in a SUV, who claims to be a keen lover of animals and a follower of the school of thought that research should and can be done during family trips and holidays and being a full time researcher to him is the heights of madness. What he means by research I would not know and dare not comment on that. He was concerned that we were walking in the forest at that time and asked us what protection we had, and we nonchalantly said that we have nothing to fear and just before we departed, he claimed to have seen a sambar kill in the stream. I acted dumb and sounded enthusiastic to know about it. I acted like a moron who knows nothing of the forest and this pleased and boosted his enthusiasm and his assistant, explained to us that it was a pack of dogs and might come to eat on the kill. We both sounded excited and quickly bid farewell and kept walking at a fast but constant pace.
We saw some pugmarks of leopard on the trail and some birds, but otherwise there was nothing exciting until we reached the place of the kill except that the sky was overcast and it pour any time. As we walked down the road, we heard the yelp of what sounded like a dog. It crashed into the forest. We never saw what it was. We waited silently for 10 mins and I went to the kill. It was eaten up further and all of a sudden, I did not seem to see the camera! I had camouflaged it so well that I myself could not see it in the fading light of the dense forest.
The camera triggered when I walked past and I checked if it was in place, no water had got in and realigned the focus of the camera as the kill had moved. All the while we were looking out for the mystery animal which called. Dholes- as we knew had calls like a whistle and they are fondly called “Whistling Hunters”. This yelp of a dog made us think that a stray mongrel from Kariyar was stealing meat from the kill but in that case, we should have been able to see it as they would try to chase us instead of them running away. Darkness fell soon and we moved on to take the bus down to Mundanthurai and reaching by dinner time. Over dinner, we discussed this with Rajkamal and Saleem and both of them were not sure of such a call. It was decided that myself and john go the next day morning at day break and remove the camera trap. Having the reputation of being a self claimed gentleman, I offered anyone who was interested to come along and Jahnavi, Rajkamal and Smrity wanted to come. Since Smrity was new to this field and had not seen a kill, I told her to be ready at 5 am and I would pick her up on the bike from the dormitory.
Morning came and the usual rush to use the loo was on and like Saleem says the sight of half naked chaddi clad men was a common sight the first thing every morning! Managing to freshen up, I left in a hurry with john to pick Smrity up who stayed in another dormitory exclusively for ladies of the team. On reaching there, I could not hear a sound and there was no activity, I knocked the door and no one opened. Jahnavi and others in another room knocked too and no one opened. So much for being a gentleman, I left with john and went straight to the trail to recover the camera, if it was there that is.
The same quick stealthy pace was on and as we reached the kill, I saw two wild dogs bolt across the road giving the same yelp I had heard the previous evening. One step closer and two more bolted to the hills on the left of the stream. Both of us were awestruck! What a way it was to begin our day! We rushed up to collect the camera and the kill was almost eaten, it was dragged quite away from where we initially saw it and the camera, fortunately was still there. The dogs, were in the forest, some 50m away and I guess they were looking at us and wondering at our antics!
I pulled out the SD card form the trap, inserted it into my camera and saw the images and lo behold! There were images of myself testing it, a short while later 4 dogs and in the evening I reappear to check the trap and then the spotted master takes over the stage of this perfectly eternal drama of life which ends with dogs coming over at night. The leopard was indeed feeding on a kill made by dogs! Though I could see only previews of the thumbnails on my camera, I was pleased and so was john. We were out of words and on clouds with numerous nines!!
We rode back, John relived Chian who was at the booth all night and I took him to do the road kill survey on the way back to Mundanthurai. Chian was excited and he kept reaffirming the decision of not walking into a death trap. Road kill survey done , had a quick breakfast and filled in about the situation to whoever was there and then went to the dorm to see the footage on a computer!

The sequence of events was so beautiful that I was indeed full of joy seeing the drama in the shadows of the night. The dogs came about 2 hours after we set up the camera, one came then another and joined by two more, they were visibly fidgety, which is expected being the road and lot of people walking to and fro. They fed till about 1630hrs and then they see something up the road and all run. This must have been the IAS officer passing by in his jeep. Then, within 15min the dogs are back on the kill only to run when I reach there. The video shows that the animal was feeding half a minute before I reached! Exactly after 10 mins, I appear on the frame and after 2 more hours of me leaving, the majestic leopard walks in elegantly and begins feeding on the kill for about 2.4 hours up until 21 hours. Then there is a gap of 1 hr or so and the dogs re appear, they are far less fidgety then they were in the day and are playful as ever and one fellow also comes and sniffs the camera! The majority of the kill is eaten up in this time. The infrared camera records all this without the animals even knowing of its existence! The dogs feed till about 0031hrs. None of us knew that dogs come out and feed in the night! By 0400hrs the dogs reappear and feed until 0600hrs where I go and scare them away! All this was beautifully captured in 5-15 sec clipping coupled with pictures! With this whole experience, we learnt that dogs come back to their kill; Leopards do sneak in and feed when they have an easy meal at their disposal and wild dogs yelp like dogs too!! And of course, they come feed even at night! All this was entirely new for the whole team and all of us were simply enthralled by the whole sequence of events that led to this set of (personally at least!) wonderful natural history observations over two days.
(I have put some images below and All images and Copyright rests with ATREE team, KMTR.I put two clippings but they dont seem to appear!)

The dog about to scoot seeing SUV

Yours truly checking the trap

The spotted master

Dholes back in action

If some of you were wondering what happened to the lady who was to come with me, she came to the dorm with a scared and a sorry look on her face when we all were seeing the footage. Lucky for her that I was too happy to be angry like I was that morning when she dint turn up upsetting the entire schedule and she apologized for absconding and said she never woke up as there was no alarm clock! I guess the missing of the dogs taught her a lesson and hope she will never miss a time set for work again!