Article submitted by – Anirudh Chaoji
Exploring the forests before the year 2000 meant that you, more often than not, were on foot… something that is still being done by the locals and the Forest Department staff. Many of the earlier wild-lifers often participated in the pugmarks census with the Forest Department and then sat on rickety watch-towers overnight for the waterhole census. For today’s urban wildlife lovers, unfortunately not many places allow the luxury of touch, smell, sound of the jungles.Â
Thus questions like “Is it not dangerous to walk in a forest?”; “What will you do if a tiger comes in front of you?”, are heard more often these days. The truth is that forests are far safer places than many urban centres. However, one has to learn to live in a forest among its inhabitants. On a road, would you not take care of yourself, with fast moving and heavy traffic?
Similarly, over the years of jungle learnings from my tribal and forester friends, respect for smarter, stronger and faster beautiful people, developed in me. Ganesan, a local tribal from Topslip in Annamalai, would be with us till 9 at night, then go home around 4 kms away in the jungle, only return by 6 am. It may sound crazy, but he walked both ways through the forest co-inhabited by tigers, leopards, sloth bears and also elephants. His answer was very simple. “I always sing my way home to announce to the animals, that a dangerous human is on his way, so you need to move away.” Also, instead of walking, I run, sending messages- vibrations to creepy crawlies of my approach”.
Similarly, Murad from Gir taught me a very simple principle, “When you walk tall, you are a dangerous human… but the moment you sit or squat in a forest, you automatically become a monkey. Then, you are a prey!”. Doesn’t this explain the many deaths of people, when they went out to defecate?
Once four of us were walking in a forest with a mating tiger pair ahead of us. Expecting the male to come on the road, we hid behind a small culvert. Just as the tiger came on the road, one of us suddenly stood up and almost instantaneously, I pulled him down. However, the tiger managed to notice a movement and then saw us… monkey-like animals!!! It immediately turned towards us … “If it takes two more steps in our direction, just stand up”, I said and we waited anxiously. Five seconds seemed too long. He soon started trotting in our direction, and we all immediately stood up. The reaction from the tiger was instantaneous. He took a 180° turn and quickly rushed into the neighbouring forest.
It would not be out of place to add that one should not think about running away in such situations. Tigers are just too fast!!! On similar lines, when dogs chase your two wheeler, if you try to increase speed to escape, you could fall and injure yourself. It is advisable to muster the courage to stop, look into the dog’s eyes and scold it. The dog will immediately stop, lower its tail and walk away. ‘Might is right. So why fight?’
I hope that on understanding these, we don’t refer to all the tigers and leopards as man-eaters. Most human deaths in a conflict are accidental. Rarely does an animal turn into a problem one. However, when a particular animal makes repeated human kills, it must be understood that such an animal has lost all its human fear. As in case of T1 of Pandharkauda, that was believed to have eventually killed 13 people. Such an animal must be immediately removed from the forest – to ensure that the public opinion does not form against all the remaining predators in the forest. By removing from the forest can have two meanings – firstly capturing it and putting it in a cage and letting it die every day, for the rest of its life. Better still, letting the animal die just one death.
These are some simple truths of Nature. You may want to try them, to determine their authenticity.