Nature's Spokesman

by M Krishnan

  1990

  * * *

  * Not reproduced here.

  10

  Python at Home

  The wretched thing about being a naturalist is that one is so handicapped in one’s expression. A big-game hunter now; or an explorer, can afford a sense of style. He doesn’t have to use pompous-sounding words like ‘dorsal’ for ‘back’ or ‘dormant’ for ‘resting’—and when he has a photograph to illustrate his experience, he can choose his mode of retailing it.

  And it is not as if I do not know that mode, after having been an avid reader of shikar literature from boyhood. This is how I should tell you about my python.

  ‘There was an ineffable assurance of peace in that sylvan retreat. The morning sun, filtered by the green canopy high overhead, illumined the scene with a soft, clear effulgence. The young grass underfoot cushioned each footfall like a carpet, and was as innocent of guile, the still vistas, flanked by the great gnarled boles, seemed inviolable in their ancient calm, and somewhere at hand an iora was calling flutily to its mate.

  ‘But that sixth sense that we, who wander through the jungles, learn to know and trust, warned me just in time. Suddenly I felt a prickling sensation along the nape of my neck, as a feeling of imminent danger overwhelmed me. I looked up hastily, and saw the python lying in wait on the outflung limb of a giant mango, right above my head. Still as a log it lay, the thick, pale-bellied body stretched along the branch, the very tip of its tail curled securely around the trunk to lend anchorage to the monster’s weight when it threw itself in coils on the unsuspecting victim passing beneath. I stopped dead, and frustrated in its hopes the reptile lay unmoving on its branch glaring balefully at me from its cold-blooded, evil eyes. Quickly snatching up my trusty old 105 mm …’

  On second thoughts, I withdraw my regrets. Just as well that I am a naturalist and no shikari. However, I did have an adventure of sorts with this python, and the man who owned it and brought it to me. It was no monster being only about ten-foot long, but the man assured me that it was quite grown-up; he himself had had it only for two years, but by certain tokens, known only to an expert of his maturity, he estimated that python was as old as he was—and he looked a hard-lived fifty. What he said could be true, for in many reptiles growth is not mainly dependent on age, as it is in the higher animals, but mainly on food supply—if systematically starved a reptile may remain dwarfed like a Japanese pot-tree. However when I questioned that man about his pet his replies were so evasive and patently false that I felt sure the snake was only ten-foot-old, by the normal growth-rate of pythons.

  That man knew a thing or two about snakes, though. The trouble with him was not that he was a charlatan, but that he looked so obviously a character, and felt he had to live up to his looks. Having concluded a contract with me to allow me to photograph his python, he felt he could not part with any piece of information about the snake, however trivial, without further fee—and for my part, having agreed to an exorbitant photographing fee, I was unwilling to part with so much as one extra paisa.

  He wanted to know if my weak flash radiated heat, along with light, and would allow me to use it on his python only after I had demonstrated its lack of warmth to him. That showed a real understanding of snakes, which are quickly killed by an overall thermal shock. When I had taken two of the four pictures allowed me by the bargain, I wanted the snake up a tree—and my mango was conveniently handy.

  The python had cast its skin recently—its skin was smooth and glistening, but about the head and neck bits of the old skin still clung to it. The man said that in its tender, new skin the snake would not climb a tree of its own accord, and that it would have to be hoisted bodily on to the lowest branch. This might involve some risk of abrasion or other injury, and in the circumstances he felt the compensation of a tattered old shirt, that I wanted no longer, was indicated, in addition to the stipulated cash. I did not like the prospective look he gave my shirt, which was only frayed at the collar. Meanwhile the snake resolved the argument by flowing up the tree.

  I have seen many other snakes climb trees, easily and speedily, but none with the sheer fluency of that thick-bodied python. It just flowed up the trunk, unhurried but swift, and ignoring the lowest branch, elected to stretch itself along a higher, horizontal limb of the tree. By the time I had taken my quick snaps, its furious owner was at the tree, and climbing it after his property. Thereupon the python swayed its head, and the front third of its body, outwards and upwards, established contact with a bough higher up, and swarmed on to it.

  No doubt the man could have climbed on to that branch, too, but he was too canny to do so. He saw no point in panicking his snake which might result in its precipitating itself on to the kitchen roof and in a frantic chase over the tiles, only providing me with more pictures—especially in view of my determination to hang on to my shirt. So he asked for a stout bamboo pole, and padding one end of it with his turban, pushed steadily with the padded end against the side of the snake, a yard above its tail: he threw this length of the python off the bough, and then it could not go forward but had to turn back—evidently the forward urge begins at the tail end, or else it has to be sustained by stability at that end; with this basic stability upset, the snake had to seek a fresh hold, lower down. By repeating the manoeuvre, he had the snake climbing down the tree, and in another minute it was round his neck in a mottled garland once more.

  A python can swim with the same effortlessness with which it climbs—only those who have seen this great, heavy snake in a pool or river can know how graceful and quick it can be in the water. We have many swifter snakes in our country and many that are much more dangerous, but few that are as impressive or beautifully marked as the forest-loving python.

  I don’t think the python is dangerous to man. That it can attack and overcome prey the size of langurs, pig and deer is a fact—there are reliable records of big pythons having seized and swallowed such large creatures. There have also been rare, quite rare, instances of a python attacking a child—the circumstances, in such instances, were probably exceptional in the extreme. In areas where pythons occur, and have occurred for generations, I have not been able to elicit a single record of a man having had anything worse than a bad fright from a chance-met python. Of course, in weighing such evidence, one has to take note of the fact that men stumbling on a python in a jungle, usually run away—though some tribes, which fancy python meat, hunt the snake. Anyway, pythons do not, without provocation, attack or chase men trespassing on their territory as some poisonous snakes do. It is said that they strike out in self-defence with the heavy, blunt tip of their noses, with their body weight behind the lunging movement: such a blow can knock out a grown man.

  Once I was asked to comment on a newspaper report of a python that had entwined itself around a young elephant: the report said that after a titanic struggle, the snake had succeeded in asphyxiating the elephant—and did it go on to add that, spent by the effort the python, in turn, gave up the ghost? I do not remember if it did, but I do recall that wisely I refused to comment on the report. The point of the story does not concern the crushing or swallowing capacity of the python, but only the swallowing capacity of the reader.

  1958

  11

  The Disappearing Cheetah

  It is years since anyone came across a cheetah (or Hunting Leopard) in our jungles, and I am afraid it must now be presumed that within the past fifteen years or so it has become extinct in India. Some time in the 1940s, a nobleman shot three young cheetahs in the course of a nocturnal motor drive, and published the photograph of his victims to prove their identities—and naturally got no kudos for what he had done. Later, another nocturnal motorist reported having seen a cheetah in the glare of his headlights, somewhere near Chittoor, I think. The last claim of a sight-record that I heard was at Muggumpi, on the Hyderabad side of the Tungabhadra area, in July 1951.

  Here, some local shikaris said that one of them had seen a Sivungi (the cheetah, which i
s the Sivingi in Tamil, is the Sivungi in Kannada). When I questioned him, the man who was said to have seen the beast said that it was a fact that he had seen a Sivungi. Asked to describe it, he said it was a Sivungi. Asked if he was sure that it was not a leopard he had seen, he was quite sure it was not. Questioned about the specific differences between a leopard and the creature he had seen, he said he knew it was a Sivungi and no leopard because, didn’t I see, it looked like a Sivungi. He had seen it from over a 150 yards away, squatting on its haunches like a dog (or a leopard!) in the shade of a bush. I explained the difference between the solid spots of a cheetah and the rosettes of a leopard and asked if he had observed this difference, and he said yes, that was it, now that he had been reminded of it, he could distinctly remember that the creature he had seen had solid spots and not rosettes—I thought that conclusively established the uselessness of his report, because he who can tell the solid spots of a cheetah squatting in the shade of a bush from the rosettes of a leopard, from 150 yards away, is not gifted with keen sight, but only with a keen imagination—both animals look a warm, murky, indistinct grey from that distance.

  However, I persisted with my cross-examination, for the area was one of the likeliest to hold cheetahs if they were still to be found in India, but only succeeded in provoking that shikari into defiant and positive statements. He had not seen the animal in movement, but twice, or may be it was four times, he had seen a Sivungi squatting in the shade of a bush, which, he assured me, was its favourite method of spending its time. So I dismissed the man’s claim from my mind—till last year.

  Last year I met someone who had travelled miles to a place not far from Muggumpi to see the imported African cheetahs of a maharaja run down blackbuck. Never having witnessed the sport and spectacle, I asked for a detailed account of the hunt, and got it. Following the traditional mode, the hooded cheetahs had been taken in a cart (or perhaps it was a jeep—I cannot recall this detail) to near where a herd of buck was grazing, then unhooded and released. Thereupon the cheetahs promptly made for the nearest bush, and sat in its shade. Egged on by their handlers to chase the fleeing quarry, they had retreated to a more sheltered bush, under which they sat solidly on. Well, well!

  The cheetah is the fastest animal on earth for the first furlong or two—it is the only hunter that can give blackbuck a start of some fifty yards, and overhaul them within two furlongs. It has the ability of the cat family (to which it belongs, in spite of its claws being only partially retractile, and its greyhound-like build, and its classification apart from the true cats) to reach top speed almost at once from a crouching start. This, and the way it takes advantage of every bush and dip in the ground to get as close as it can to the grazing herd before launching its headlong attack, no doubt help substantially in the effectiveness of its hunting, but though blackbuck take some time to reach their best speed (the first few bounds are rather high, even when they do not indulge in their characteristic ‘high jinks’ but scatter at once in panic flight), no other animal can overtake them as the cheetah does—greyhounds are left far behind by the buck. Many estimates of the cheetah’s speed have been made, some with stopwatches, timing the animal over a known distance, and when going all out, its speed is over 70 m.p.h.

  If it does not catch up with its quarry within a quarter of a mile or so, it gives up the chase, for it does not have the buck’s capacity for sustained speed over long distances. But of course, blackbuck were not (the past tense, unfortunately, is necessary) the only prey of the cheetah here—chinkara, hares, and the other small animals of the hill-dotted scrub-jungles it liked, all helped to keep it going. I believe I am correct in saying that no wild cheetah has ever been known to attack a man, but occasionally it took a goat from a nearby village.

  Blackbuck-hunting with cheetahs was a sport much in vogue in the old days. Some of the Mughal emperors maintained regular armies of cheetahs for the purpose, some hundreds of them, and the pastime was popular even with the lesser kings and chieftains. Some of these hunting leopards were imported from Asia, north of India, and some perhaps even from Africa, but the majority were indigenous—the Deccan was the stronghold of cheetahs in India for centuries. And although the cheetah was known elsewhere in Asia, and in Africa (where it is still to be found), it was here, in India, that the art of catching and training the animal for the sport was developed.

  Only fully adult animals, already experienced in running down fleet-footed prey, were caught for training—as in falconry, it was held that only a hunter that had learnt its hunting skills in the hard school of nature would be fitted for the sport. The animals were snared and netted, and then tamed by a curious process of attrition, not dissimilar to modern methods of treating prisoners of war. The captive was securely tied up, and given no food or peace; shrill-voiced men and women sat around it in relays, scolding it continually, night and day, till it gave in and its resistance was broken down by sheer puzzlement and exhaustion. Then its handler would feed it and make much of it, and very soon it was quite tame and obedient. It was unnecessary to teach it to run down buck, for that it already knew to do, but naturally a measure of obedience to the keeper’s call was highly desirable in a pet whose speed, when liberated, was superior to the buck’s!

  Since there is no real difference between the African and Indian cheetah, and since the animal is still to be found in Africa, people have suggested the revival of the cheetah, the so-recently lost pride of our fauna, by reintroduction of imported stock into suitable areas. But where are the suitable areas? Till we have established a sanctuary for the animals of the plains sufficiently spacious and sufficiently stocked with the fauna anciently native to it, and, as far as possible, free of exotic plants, I do not think the trouble and expense of getting a few cheetahs from Africa for liberation into an Indian sanctuary is justified—such an experiment, without such an established territory, can only fail. I have not seen any sanctuary or national park in India meant exclusively for the animals of the open country, and which is wide enough to hold a pair or two of cheetahs—nor have I heard of it. Perhaps Madras state, which has in recent years done such excellent work in the cause of our wildlife, can take the lead in this.

  1960

  12

  An Afternoon Idyll

  Returning home on the evening of the third day, I was full of black thoughts. The first day, the all-important cable release of my most-valued camera had been broken to pieces—I had already been assured that this release (without which the camera would not function) was not available anywhere in India, and could not be imported. The second day a roll-film holder, containing eight painstakingly obtained records of gaur indulging in their midday siesta, had gone phut. And the third day the mahout had steered us straight into seven-foot-high grass; asked to get us out of that tall grass, where no photography was possible even in the unlikely event of an animal being seen, he had done so promptly and taken us into a sea of twelve-foot-high grass. Apparently, the man had lost his bearings.

  When we got down from the pad, I remembered to offer Vikram, the lusty young tusker that had transported us through that ocean of grass, the customary bananas. Prompted by a belated wish to please me, the mahout asked his charge to salute me, which the greedy beast did readily. As we were walking towards the camp, my wife called my attention to the remarkable behaviour of our late ship.

  There was a lush growth of grass atop the embankment by which the elephant stood, and the mahout was busy attending to some ropes. Left to himself, Vikram was going through a curious ritual. He would fling up his trunk in a faultless salute, then, by a deft lateral shift of the upflung tip, coil it around the young grass and tear up a bunch, which he would convey swiftly and furtively to his mouth; again he would salute the air, and again grab a mouthful of tender grass. Apparently he had been taught to salute with toothsome inducements, and in some vague elephantine manner associated the gesture with legitimized food. It was the most risibly cynical interpretation of Grace before Meal I had ever come acro
ss, and it amused me so much I clean forgot my failures!

  However, I decided to take complete charge next day. I could not say I had contributed nothing to my poor luck so far, but others, had contributed much more. Twice we had seen a herd of gaur on approachable terrain, and both times the beasts had been alarmed and then stampeded by the insistence of the mahout on the wrong tactics. I am a man who is content with doing his own bungling, and need no outside help. Assured by a morning reconnaissance, that a herd was resting in a jungle nearby, I arranged to have entire charge of operations.

  This is not a photographic note, but I should explain that already I had some passably good pictures of gaur, and wished to get to within twenty yards of a dark, fully adult specimen, standing more or less in the open, to secure the kind of intimate photographs I wanted. At Mudumalai, where I was, the gaur are not accustomed to such a close approach, even when they are in a herd and the observers on elephant-back. They were in September, very much on the qui vive—I believe they are easier to approach in summer. My plan, which depended on my interpretation of their instinctive responses, was to let the beasts see us before they could smell us, and stop a fair distance away in sight of the herd, without panicking them unduly. Then, by a circuitous approach, which would certainly involve their scenting us on occasion, and taking care to keep within their sight all the time, I hoped, by slow advance on opportunity, to get close to them.