One fine day at Darjeeling, Dr. Sukumar Roy Choudhury, zoo-vet and Deputy Director at Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, Darjeeling, noticed a badly wounded, non-descript, brown-eyed, pied dog of indistinct breed looking up at him with woebegone, sad eyes. The dog seemed to have suffered deep gashes and lacerations in a fight with another of his kind, and was at the verge of collapse. Being a very kind-hearted soul that he was, Dr. Roy Choudhury was deeply moved by the sight. He took charge of the injured dog, nursed him to good health, and named him Tommy. Tommy reciprocated by taking a vow not to let Dr. Roy Choudhury out of sight at any cost – an arrangement that resulted in mixed reactions in the kind-hearted doctor’s mind. Tommy would not let him out of sight even for a few seconds. Because of his attachment to the officer, Tommy’s appearance on the scene signaled to the zoo staff the arrival of their supervising officer. If you wanted to locate the whereabouts of the Deputy Director, the best way was to look for Tommy and you would be sure to find him somewhere nearby.
Those days Darjeeling was passing through a period of intense political activity by a local political party demanding autonomy for the hill region. Every evening, with the arrival of the dark, the town apprehensively waited for signs or sounds of any armed encounters between the activists and the police forces. At such times, it was Tommy’s presence that infused a sense of security in the Dr. Roy Choudhury’s heart on his way back from the zoo to his residence.
I could not help getting introduced to Tommy automatically on the day I landed at Darjeeling zoo to join my duty as Director, Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park. It was the morning of December 8, 1987 when Dr.Roy Choudhury walked into my office to introduce me to my new work place. As he entered the chamber he very slowly and deliberately closed the door behind him, making sure that the tongue of the door-lock was properly secured in its slot. No sooner did he turn to face me than the plywood panel of the door received a violent assault from Tommy’s claws. The hollow panel acted as a wonderful sound-box and amplified the ear-splitting screeches Tommy’s nails produced on the plywood door, making it impossible for me to hear what Dr. Roy Choudhury was trying to say. Embarrassed and red in face, but still wearing a genial smile, Dr. Roy Choudhury excused himself, turned round, opened the door and commanded, “Ay, Tommy! Jaa, Jaa!!” Silence… Dr. Roy Choudhury carefully closed the door again, turned round, and took a step toward my table. Silence prevailed for precisely one moment and then the screeching door came alive once again. I was more worried about the permanent effect the claws were going to register on the door – it would not at all give a good signal to a visitor if the door to the Director’s chamber suggested that the new Director believed in clawing the door open. So I asked Dr. Roy Choudhury to let the dog in.
Tommy quietly entered the room, and just sat down beside Dr. Roy Choudhury. There he remained till our work was over and the Deputy Director rose to take me on a round of the zoo. Tommy led the way.
It was then Dr. Roy Choudhury gave me the details of Tommy’s entry into his life. He was now quite comfortable with the dog, despite the fact that the arrangement caused him a few problems, but these were of trivial nature. Tommy was averse to travel by motorized transport. So, he would not board the zoo vehicle, nor would he let Dr. Roy Choudhury out of his view. And for this reason the veterinarian had to walk Darjeeling roads instead of riding the zoo vehicle even when he wanted to procure medicines for the zoo animals.
Tommy would also not let any unfamiliar person get close to Dr. Roy Choudhury. No stranger dared step within a radius of ten feet from Dr. Roy Choudhury without getting a warning growl from Tommy. However, with Dr. Roy Choudhury’s friends Tommy was unmoved and reserved. He did not growl or physically demonstrate his concern if someone happened to come too near the Doctor: his way to send the required signal was by putting himself as a shield between the two, such that there was no further chance of getting closer. But Tommy did not make such moves if in his opinion the person was accompanying Dr. Roy Choudhury. I was never inconvenienced by his presence, nor to my mind any of the zoo staff ever felt inconvenienced by him.
When accompanying Dr. Roy Choudhury on his daily inspections. Tommy studiously ignored the animals in the zoo, as if they did not exist at all. However, the leopards in the zoo enclosures did show a very keen interest in Tommy as he accompanied Dr. Roy Choudhury on his usual rounds of inspection of zoo animals. As Tommy walked by the leopard enclosures, the inmates of the enclosures would silently pad along parallel to him, keeping pace with him and keeping their eyes hungrily riveted on him till he was out of their sight.
Tommy had remarkable qualities. And I presume all dog lovers will agree that dogs do exhibit such remarkable qualities – intelligence, affection, loyalty, emotion, discretion etc., – that make them so lovable friends. But Tommy revealed that dogs also are capable of consciously planning and taking actions based on deductive logic!
Tommy had grown old – only a few of his teeth had still remained loyal to him. When his jaw dropped as he panted dog-like with his mouth open one could see that he had lost his lower canines and a few pre-molars. He was unable to fight with other, younger dogs without coming out next best – not that he had any reason to do so. Yet, there are circumstances when one just cannot ignore the challenges in life.
One such challenge was the visit to the zoo dump. In an inconspicuous corner of the zoo, away from the animal enclosures and public view, a depression in the adjoining tree covered slope was used as a dumping ground for disposing off the leftovers of the previous day’s animal food. In importance the site ranked very high in the opinion of all the village dogs, cats, magpies, crows, rats and other scavenging job-holders of the neighboring animal world. The contents of the dump used to get replenished every morning and evening immediately after the animal shelters were cleaned by their respective keepers. Throughout the night, with the cessation of the movement of human beings in the zoo after its closure, I imagine, quite a crowd of denizens of the adjacent forest visited the dump. I had seen the evidences of their visitation. During the day, when human beings were active in the neighborhood of the dump, it was the turn of local dogs, cats and other bolder animals to visit the dump.
But here lay the challenge for Tommy, the hero of this tale. The alluring delicious odors wafting in the air tugged at his heart, beckoning him to visit the dump that offered a variety of exotic meals, but the intimidating memories of the last attempt which had compelled him to see the doctor and get treated by Dr. Roy Choudhury had not vanished from his mind. Further, he had been fast losing strength and teeth. Torn between the two opposite emotions, Tommy was unable to reach any plan of action for quite some time, and then…
One morning, just after Dr. Roy Choudhury and I had inspected the Siberian tiger enclosure and night shelters, I noticed Tommy was not in sight. This was quite intriguing to me in view of Tommy’s inseparability from Dr. Roy Choudhury. To my query, Dr. Roy Choudhury was non-committal. He replied that Tommy must be around somewhere. This was neither here nor there. A few days later, it became clear that Tommy had taken up the challenge of the younger generation and emerged victorious in his endeavors!
Those days, the zoo had four adult Siberian tigers. One of the pairs had borne two cute little cubs. The success in breeding of Siberian cubs had taken place after a gap of eighteen years. Therefore, we were taking no chances with the litter. Milaya, the tigress, was a very possessive mother. She had a hair-trigger temper: she only tolerated the presence of her keeper but was very demonstrative of her annoyance towards his assistant and would not let him clean her shelter, not to speak of tolerating his presence. This posed some problem, which was solved by introduction of a temporary change in the routine for management of the night shelters of the tigers.
The feeding time for the carnivores at the zoo was around 4.30 in the afternoon. This was a very convenient arrangement for drawing the tigers, wolves, leopards and other animals into their night shelters for the night, without having to force-drive them in. Darjeeling is affected by a moist cold climate and the precipitation of rain is quite unpredictable except in the months of October and November when the sky is clear blue and the rains do not threaten the outdoorsman, and which I consider are also the best months to visit the hill station. The winter days are pleasant and sunny but after sun-down the ambient temperature plummets all of a sudden, making the nights bitterly cold. The night shelters provide the zoo animals cozy and safe quarters.
Normally, there is no extra protection needed by the animals like the Siberian tigers and Tibetan wolves that belong to cold regions. But straw-beds, jute screens and, if required, hot-air blowers are also provided for further protection from cold. After the birth of the cubs the need to provide them with a straw bed for strengthening their protection from cold was recognized, and everyday, before the tigers were allowed their food and rest in their night shelters, beds of straw were prepared in their shelters. Milaya, the tigress, readily adjusted to this change in the routine and seemed to like it. After feeding, she would settle down for the night on the straw bed with her cubs. Some part of the straw bed would invariably get soiled overnight by the urine of the cubs necessitating a change. The following morning, after the tigers were let out of their rooms, the soiled straw was removed from the night shelters and dumped at a cemented platform from where it was later carried out of the zoo.
The inspection of the zoo enclosures and zoo animals before and after the zoo hours was a routine Dr. Roy Choudhury and I religiously performed twice a day. So, it did not take too many days for us to discover Tommy’s ingenuity in planning and executing his strategy to win the challenge. Everyday, Tommy would disappear for a few minutes after we reached the tiger enclosures. Every morning, I noticed, Tommy would keep us company till we entered the night shelter to inspect their condition after cleaning. And everyday, both of us were puzzled by the sudden disappearance of Tommy for a short while at that point of time.
The mystery was finally solved on the morning I had been slightly late in following Dr. Roy Choudhury to the Siberian tiger enclosures. When I reached the tiger house, Dr. Roy Choudhury had already entered the building. A thick mat of soiled straw had been taken out of the night shelters and it lay spread out on the cemented platform in front of the building. To my astonishment, I saw Tommy walking on to the straw bed and scraping his hind feet on the mat. The straw flew and a strong stench of tiger urine filled the air.
I was astonished because I thought the tiger smell is not something that should evoke a pleasurable emotion in the mind of a dog, and entice him into playing with it! The scene was such that I could not resist continuing to watch it for some time more till Tommy rose, smelt the spot where he had scraped out the straw from the mat and turned and headed for the dump where the left over bones and pieces of tigers’ meals had been disposed by the tiger keeper. The sight that greeted me was unforgettable.
At the foot of the steep hill slope behind the tiger enclosures a depression, about 18 feet across, was littered with the waste from the carnivorous-animal enclosures. Blue bottle-flies buzzed and a group of village pie-dogs bantered, scuffled, growled and yelped their resistance to getting pushed out of the melee for taking possession of choice morsels. The depression fairly bristled with pale, brown, pie-bald, black, furry, mangy, small, big, young and not-so-young, all types of canine competitors.
Toward that heaving, bustling mass of claw and tooth fighters, Tommy made a beeline with unflinching, determined gait. A brave weakling! The company at the dump took no heed of the hero’s approach till Tommy was within their smelling distance. And then pandemonium broke loose. There was a great churning of canine crowd, and the dogs shot off from the melee toward the safety of the forest cover, some with their hair standing like tooth-brush bristles, some with quickly drooping tails, and one or two with their eyes suddenly changing their expressions from that of bullying aggression to abject terror. A tiger had arrived!
Tommy, proud and composed, took his time to pick up a juicy bone with choicest morsel attached to it and retired to a corner to finish it before, he thought, Dr. Roy Choudhury would miss him.
The zoo at Darjeeling does not have a system of manning the senior positions on a long term basis. The posts of Director, Deputy Director and Assistant Director – cum – Veterinary Officer are manned by suitable officers selected from other government departments on short tenure basis. The tenures of such officers are initially for a period of four to five years and may be extended if the departments permit the extensions. Dr. Roy Choudhury served Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park till 1991. He had to be repatriated to his parent Department on completion of his tenure at the zoo. Everyone at the zoo waited to see if Tommy would leave Darjeeling when Dr. Roy Choudhury did. But Tommy was left behind, forlorn and confused at the sudden disappearance of Dr. Roy Choudhury. Dr. Roy Choudhury felt that Tommy would not survive the heat of the plains of southern Bengal. Tommy was already well advanced in years. Leaving him to the care of the zoo staff, Dr. Roy Choudhury left Darjeeling. Perhaps Tommy understood his dilemma and settled down after a few days of confusion. Or, perhaps, like all other guardians, Tommy accepted the departure of his ward as a natural phenomenon and reconciled with life without Dr. Roy Choudhury. He had many other things to do. I, too, left the zoo in 1992. Till that time Tommy was very much a part of the zoo people. I think he just faded away when his time came.
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1 comments:
The writeup is excellent sir. It indeed proves animal nature is different and they too have some sort of sense like Tommy did.
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