Dmen in Bannerghatta again

Author: Raghu

Dmen in Bannerghatta again!!

It's on the 4th of November, 2005 we decide to visit our adopted
quadrupeds in Bannerghatta.Its the first visit for Ravi,Dany and Sanjay
since we adopted the cuddly li'l kusha and the menacing Assamese king
cobra. Dany got his aunt's Maruti car for this planned visit.

Off we went at around 12 pm today.. after a heavy brunch in a udupi
hotel in btm.

We reached B'ghatta around 2 pm. We went straight to the office to talk
to Karthick (who had introduced us to this adoption programme the last
time) We couldn't find him and so I called up Kartick on his phone.
Kartick told me that he has quit this job and is interested in doing
something on his own.
He said that he has got some formalities to complete and so he will come
down and ensure that our passes and the certificate of adoption reach us
before he leaves for good.

Anyways, we filed our way into the biological park and went past the
elephants zone and saw the marsh crocs, caiman crocs on our way. These
giant thick skinned scaly animals seemed to lie still as if trapped in a
time warp. We also saw the gulley nari enclosure on our way to the
leopards den. We could spot some bums trying to shout and scare the poor
animals there.

We called up Dr. Das, the onsite vet and met him along with Venkatesh,
the leopards caretaker. He recognized me from our earlier visit. He took
us inside the enclosure, the same area where we played with the small
cuddly cubs about 3 months back.

Well, Lava and Kusha were still there with their mother - Gauri. But the
small adorable brats had grown up in size and were fast outgrowing their
mother. Gauri seemed to be exhausted and just lay gazing quietly at us.
The two cubs were up in a flash climbing the cage, trying to paw us from
the small opening in the cage, growling and enjoyed being petted by
Venkatesh and Us.

Ravi seemed to be excited and started talking to L & K and the two cubs
with big clear eyes looked up at him as he gestured at them and that set
them off again to tumble against each other. We all had a blast feeling
their soft fur. We touched their flanks, nose, and aws. Ravi touched
Kusha's moustache and the little guy was livid as it shook its head and
bared its fangs playfully.

Venkatesh told us about Gauri and its 7 kids of which only 3 lived
today. Gauri had apparently eaten up the first 4. The eldest female
sibling is called Chinnu and is 3 months older than Lava and Kusha. We
saw Chintu (we saw this young male leopard the last time we visited the
enclosure as it lay in the ext cage) in the open den playing around with
the other senior leopards. Venkatesh further informed that Gauri will be
operated upon to ensure that she lives longer. Lava and Kusha will soon
be out in the open with the other big cats in probably another 3-4
months. He told us that L and K feast on chicken everyday at 5 pm (one
meal per day) as Gauri gorges on her diet of beef. Venkatesh later
showed us Ganesha, another big one in the open den. He seems to be so
fond of all the inmates there and that showed as he talked to us about
how he's working in B'ghatta for the past 11 years caring for the
leopards and said he enjoyed every moment there.

Our hands smelt of the wild cats odor as we came out slowly. It was a
good 45 minutes of time that we spent with those adorable brats feeling
assured that they are being taken care of well. We next visited the King
cobra enclosure and saw the big snakes which lay still after a heavy
meal. There were around 3 cobras of which one was shedding its skin.

All of us - Ravi, Sanjay and Dany all felt very happy touching and
petting L & K. Dany soon got a call from his office and told us that he
needed to go back for some meeting. So, we left around 5 pm promising
ourselves that we'd back soon to check on them.