Animal Kingdom

What are your favorite animals?

All animals are beautiful.

As I have said earlier I am a dog person.

I love dogs. They are my bestest friends.

But I also like other animals whom I have not befriended though.

I am not a cat person. I don’t understand them. But I admire their feline grace, their contemptuous gaze towards humans, their self sufficiency when it comes to survival, their dauntless spirit while battling it out with their canine foes.

Our block has too many dogs. So cats are a rare sight.

Recently, my friend went to Nairobi for a workshop. She sent me these pics :

Aren’t they graceful?

Deers are innocence and grace personified. Giraffes have a very cute but aloof look on their faces. Zebras seem to be self absorbed.

What to say about the “Lion King”? So regal and cool!!

I also like horses, especially, when they gallop at full speed. A well kept horse has a shine on its coat. The movement of their muscles have a cadence to it. The horses maintained at President’s estate are well bred and well cared for.

We often find elephant riders on road. Their mammoth body give them a formidable appearance. But they are friendly and trainable I am told. My mother’s caregiver tells me how the wild elephants destroyed her house thrice and she had to rebuild it each time. Now, thankfully, she lives away from the forests. But quite often she recounts how elephants in groups have attacked other villages and created havoc. I remember in Kolkatta we often got late to office in the Circus season when the participant elephants were taken for their daily baths blocking the highway. How amusing it used to be!!!

Monkeys are a common sight in Delhi. But they are quite ‘urbanised’ and don’t tease people much. We have a famous Monkey Lane in Central Delhi which is part of a receding forest land. The lane is, as the name goes, full of monkeys. It’s a walled hilly road. On top of the wall families of monkeys wait patiently as Delhiites stop their vehicles to feed them bananas. Needless to say, the lane is also dotted with banana sellers.

Our block is at times visited by stray monkeys. The dogs bark themselves hoarse at the sight of a stranger in their residence. Once a monkey entered my sister’s flat, sat on the dining table primly and had breakfast courtesy my B-I-L who was very excited about it.

If you look at this video carefully you can see our friend having a ramp walk on the pedestrian path.

There’s a very funny story recounted by a famous Bengali author, Shri Sunil Gangopadhyay, in one of his regular columns. A couple known to him shifted to the suburbs from Kolkata to settle amidst greenery and stay out of the maddening frenzy of metro life. But when he happened to visit them he found them tense and morose. Why ? Because day and night they were visited by bunch of monkeys who insisted that the television be kept on for their view from the balcony. In case it was put off they made such a ruckus that there was no other option but to put it on again. From urban frenzy to suburban fiasco!!. 😁😁😁

I feel sorry for asses and donkeys. They are used as beasts of burden. They perform their duties with such quiet patience. Assenine qualities in humans are looked down upon. The word ‘ass’ is used in a derogatory manner. But nobody appreciates how loyally, assiduously and uncomplainingly these animals do their strenuous job.

I am quite afraid of cows, buffaloes, bulls and oxes. They have kindly eyes but one can never make out their moods. They are often seen by the roadside sitting, sunning, chewing. It’s a sorry state of affairs because cattle owners don’t feed them properly. They are left on their own to find fodder. Many die on road eating plastics. But there are many who feed them too – vegetables, leaves and rotis.

Many traffic isles have bird baths and bird feeds. It’s a common sight as vehicles are pulled aside and owners empty out packets of seeds for pigeons, swallows, crows, parrots and others at the designated spot.

I have a pair of crows who visit me at a fixed time and caw away world affairs to Rinky. I call them Dringhankchu or Dhrigu in short, a nonsensical name coined by Satyajit Ray’s father Sukumar Ray, a renowned children’s writer who made nonsense popular through amusing, satirical poems.

A pair of wheatish coloured pigeons peck at the window in summer noons just like humans knocking at the door. Swallows and parrots are also common in the block. Parrots are the biggest fighters. Sparrows came back during Corona times when environment was pollution free. Now they have vanished again. A small bird with slender orange legs and beak used to have a loud chat with Mr. Snow Boot, my pet. Snow listened intently. Soon after it would rain. We called it Rain Bird.

We have squirrels who are miscreants. They prance around, peep inside, scoot away, play hide and seek with the crows. But they also chew away cable and broadband connection wires which is a recurrent nuisance.

Incidentally, I like pink pigs. The video is taken by my nephew in Vietnam.

I had kept an earthen water bowl for the birds and squirrels. The crows dirtied the water so much that I had to remove it. Later I was told that crows have a habit of wetting every morsel before eating. Once an unknown bird made an artistic nest in one of the Christmas trees, laid eggs, fed the chicks and once they were of age, all flew away.

As is evident I can go on and on on this prompt. So to put a full stop I give below the links of my writes here. Those who wish can read the posts and stories and let me know how you like them.

https://vanderloost.blogspot.com/2010/11/two-men-and-tiger-part-iii.html?m=1

https://vanderloost.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-am-worried-about-kaalu-and-not-for.html?m=1

https://vanderloost.blogspot.com/2010/10/whiff-of-smoke.html?m=1

http://vanderloost.blogspot.com/2010/10/story-of-strange-mr-briggs.html?m=1

http://vanderloost.blogspot.com/2010/09/two-men-and-tiger-part-i.html?m=1

http://vanderloost.blogspot.com/2010/07/rainbird.html?m=1

https://mindspeak-vanderloost.blogspot.com/2010/09/two-men-and-tiger-part-ii.html?m=1

To put on record I do not like rats, reptiles, cockroaches and lizards. Anything that crawls and stings.

Au Revoir