The misunderstood 'underdog'

The misunderstood 'underdog'

Views: 1873 | August 28, 2018

Most people think they are dogs. Or jackals. Not many spare them more than a cursory look. But dholes have fascinated the author who believes he has dhole luck!

Go to tiger reserves and chances are you will see jeeps full of bored-looking teenagers desperately searching for signal on their smartphones, and a few eager to see tigers. All other wildlife is commonly ignored by most. Weren't we the generation that grew up watching Jungle Book on DD-1, where the tiger was depicted as the most powerful creature in the forest and the dhole was the red terror, a recurring antagonist which, among other terrible things, could make even the grass and trees perish? In contrast, today's kids watch Chota Bheem, and ladoo sales are going through the roof! I hear Chota Sanju and Chota Salman are in the pipeline and I am selling the TV before my kid grows up.

Even the white hunter had nothing but contempt for the dhole, treated as vermin. You want proof? Have you ever seen a white hunter posing proudly with his gun on a dhole trophy? Nope, so point proven. Fast forward to 20th century and the same attitude continues. Tigers create Silk Board-size traffic jams even in jungles while dholes don't usually cause even a single vehicle to pause! The safari driver may stop for a few minutes on seeing a dhole pack, then grow bored and say "tiger baro time aythu water hole ge," and leave.

Year 2016 and I was waiting near the Nagarahole range office for a colleague. The morning safari crowd had just arrived and was waiting for the booking counter to open. I saw something red flash by in the low-lying area ahead. I took out my binoculars and presto! there was a dhole pack gamboling in the grass. I took a few pictures and went back to watching them with my binoculars. A few tourists noticed me watching something and came over to investigate; the conversation went something like this:

Person 1: What is he watching, they look like street dogs?

Person 2: They must be jackals, very common near my village, this fat guy must be mad.

Person 3: Agree, let’s go and take selfies with some pretty deer and feed leftovers to monkeys.

Then they left in unison.

Dholes held a special fascination for me. Like other wildlifers, I too had devoured copious amounts of hunting literature before making the career switch. Kenneth Anderson has written about quite a few encounters between dhole packs and tigers. Of battle royale where always the tiger ends up being torn to pieces by these dogs. Finally, here was an underdog that showed the tiger its place, but the dogs were sadly painted as blood-thirsty. This opinion changed when "The Pack" a documentary on dholes by Krupakar-Senani was aired. Suddenly the blood-thirsty wild dogs were transformed into a fun little pack with fascinating family lives. I would rather watch a dhole pack playing than a bored tiger walking morosely along a trail. A sure case of sour grapes? Perhaps. I still have very few tiger sightings.

My first carnivore sighting was that of a dhole pack in Nagarahole, post-monsoon in 2015. I had gone there for some logistics work and had some time to spare. We had spent an entire afternoon going on a game round trying to spot tigers but the tiger eluded us. A disappointed group was returning back to camp when voila! we sighted a dhole pack ambling down the road. This was my first carnivore sighting and I was thrilled. We spotted the same pack every day for the next three days, sometimes twice on the same day. On the days that I didn’t go to field, the dholes even obliged by dropping in to the camp. I seemed to have dhole luck. Every time I had been to a tiger reserve in the Western Ghats, I had dhole sightings. As a research assistant, I shouldn't believe in luck, but...

Year 2018 found me in the Amarabad Tiger Reserve in the Eastern Ghats with a very low density of wildlife of any sort. On the morning of the second day I was walking my first line transect. Part of the line went across a partially dried lake called Russell Cheravu and we were on the last segment of the line when I saw something reddish run across the lake bed. It was soon followed by another red streak and it dawned on us that it was a pack of dholes racing across the open lake bed. Me and my partner went down on our knees and counted 14 individuals; they were trying to catch a sambar doe and had almost surrounded it but were disturbed by us. This was the largest dhole pack I had seen anywhere, including the Western Ghats. Maybe I did have dhole luck.

But there are incidents that soon proved my dhole luck wrong. September 24th, 2016 at Camp Balekove, Nagarhole. It was my birthday. I was turning 28, which is young for a tree, midlife for an elephant and game over for a tiger. I got up a little early and went out for bird watching. Down below was the road that passes through the park, and an elephant herd was grazing nearby. There was a calf which played between two adults.

I heard a car approaching and a tiny hatchback came into view. The elephant calf was packed off with two adults into the bushes while the matriarch blocked the road and mock-charged the puny car. The driver, no doubt terrified, ground to a halt, and after a few more mock charges from the elephant the driver found his inner Michael Schumacher and with a loud honk he floored it and escaped. No doubt he would go home and brag to his friends how bravely he had faced the pachyderm and escaped due to sheer talented driving.

All the commotion brought out Harsha, my colleague, with his DSLR. The drama repeated with the next two cars as Harsha took a few photos. Finally, the elephants had enough of the pesky cars and left. Harsha too went inside with his camera. As I was about to follow Harsha I heard a chital alarm call and suddenly a herd broke cover from the bushes across the road. They were being chased by a pack of dholes! What luck on my birthday! I turned and ran to call Harsha to click some photos. It had rained the previous night and the path was slippery and I fell in the mud. What a great start for the year. I could hear muffled sniggers and turned around to see Harsha highly amused, not attempting to suppress his mirth. As I struggled to get up I fell again and this time Harsh broke into peals of laughter, slapping his thighs. Did I say dholes bring good luck? Damn those dogs, I was the butt of jokes for the next few days.

Written by Vinod Kantamneni

Photo credits: Rujan Sarkar (Cover)

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