In Search of Spots

There seemed to be a Leopard in my home town, people had seen it resting on a hillock minding its own business and had made videos, Media outlets broke the news as decently as possible to the whole state with ideal headlines like "Blood Thirsty panther on loose amidst civilization". Leopards living in cities was old news, there have been multiple events in the recent past where leopards have been seen in major cities. A Leopard snatching away dogs in Mumbai suburbs was common, a leopard in my town was surprising to me, why the hell was I visiting wildlife sanctuaries to see wildlife when there was big cat in my own backyard, this was too personal to ignore, i had to get to the bottom of it by finding some concrete evidence of its presence. A trip was planned for the weekend. I pitched the plan to my colleagues/friends Harsha, Satish, Shivu, and Ankur joined the mission.

Why did we need to go and confirm its presence? Silly question, why does the salmon swim upstream? Why do lemmings jump off cliffs? And it was either this or watching reruns of how I met your mother on comedy central during the weekend.

We left Bangalore early in the morning and after 5 hours of driving with a few coffee breaks we reached our destination. We checked into a decent hotel and left for the hillock where the Leopard was rumored to live. Let me describe the location, it was a granite hill about 1 sq. kilometer, boulder strewn, with lot of caves, the principal vegetation mainly consisted of spiny and xerophytic species, mostly shrubs or to put it simply it was like any other hillock in the Deccan. Civilization has started to spread its tentacles over the hill, a few enterprising citizens had encroached the edges and built pucca houses.

We split up into two groups Harsha and Ankur decided to explore the north part while me Satish and Shivu started walking on a trail that led south, we met a few people on the way and questioned them casually about the leopard among other things. Everybody we met had seen the leopard or had lied they had out of peer pressure; we managed to successfully keep them in the fog about our true motives. We left the locals behind and continued on our trail. The trail took a sharp turn and i came face to face with an ashy ghost or whatever scary thing it was, I Froze in my tracks out of fear, but the ghost turned out to be a Greco-cement statue of the dial up modem era abandoned by some budding artist, we had a good laugh about it and moved on.

If WikiHow had an article on how to find leopards, it would look like something below
Step 1: Look for pug marks - Easy in mud and sand but hard to find in the gravel
Step 2: Look for scat - Leopards poop to mark their territory, good way of putting waste to use
Step 3: If you somehow manage to find the leopard itself instead of signs, run in the opposite direction

If hundreds of viral videos of leopard rescues gone wrong show anything it's that people underestimate the power of a leopard, isn't it just a dog sized cat, truth strikes them later when they are collectively getting their wounds stitched up by the local doctor. Cages had been deployed to catch the cat; about 8 people were daily tying up a goat at dawn and removing it in the morning, 8 people who were more terrified of the leopard than the goat. All they would find trapped in the morning were dogs but they were still hopeful of catching the leopard, if they could catch dogs it was only matter of time before the leopard walks in. Only thing wrong with the plan is cats are way smarter than dogs, ever seen a pack of cats pulling a cart in snow or giving high fives for biscuits, no hmm.

We had covered quite a good amount of ground in a two hours but had yet to find any leopard signs. At the back of my mind i could imagine the leopard stealthily prowling through dark gullies and trails, crawling up undetected to throw itself headlong and maul us or it could have left for the other end of the hill and be taking an afternoon siesta. Big cats normally have a sense of hearing 10 times better than us or 50 times better than my grandpa. I had my bottle of pepper spray for safety but it's best used in ideal indoor locations like prison cafeteria's, dingy parking lots and parliament. If we actually encountered the leopard I could always push Satish on it and run away, he would not mind being sacrificed for uncovering a mystery, he used to be a journalist before joining WCS.

Took a small break as the sun was beating down on us. The city was roaring below oblivious to the presence of beautiful predator amidst them, does the leopard sometimes see obese city folk jogging below and smack its lips thinking how delicious they would be?. Maybe there was no leopard here, the people must have imagined stuff, the videos might have come from anywhere.

Meanwhile Shivu was looking for a good location to take a selfie, he found a ledge that looked like a good location and climbed up sure footed as a mountain goat, he had just set foot on the ledge when he gave us a shout " Leopard Scat !!!" I dragged myself up, the whole area was literally covered with leopard scats, we found a small entrance that led to a well hidden cave, the leopard seemed to be using it as its lair. You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to find out what the cat has been eating, scattered around were dog bones and skulls. Here was the evidence we had come for, the mission was a success.

The drive back to the hotel would have been uneventful if not for an increasingly popular Indian game our bikers play on roads called Wrong Side Overtaking, but one idiot lost the game because he hit the tire of our Jeep and crashed on the road, I was searching for my phone(which I had conveniently left at the hotel) to call my local friends anticipating a skirmish , but Harsha laughing very hard at the biker for his stupidity and that combined with a random middle aged uncle taking our side made the biker lose his partial conviction to fight and left. It’s a miracle how a decent looking middle aged uncle can turn public opinion in India, If you are one please put this super power to full use.

A tired bunch returned to the hotel and had some fresh chilled bubbling lemonade, because that's what responsible adults whose wives sometimes read blogs drink, we woke up late next day from hangover the lemonade had given us.

We decided to explore the city today. The main tourist place of interest was a fort sitting in middle of the city, it was tough climb uphill to get to the fort. The fort was built like a maze in Takeshi's castle, maybe the sultan expected the invaders to go round and round loose their way and go back tired. We were exploring it when Harsha found a clear rocky pool hidden beneath a rocky outcrop, The rock pool had what at first glance looked like schools of neon tetras swimming about, carefully observation revealed they were some kind of shrimp, a Google search revealed they were Red tailed fairy shrimp, normally found in vernal pools of western Ghats, a little out of place atop a hill in the Deccan but they were beautiful none the less.

The journey back started in the afternoon we sighted a herd of black buck as the highway was passing through the Deccan. The trip had revealed so many interesting things about leopards, no news has come till now about its capture, i hope it lives happy and free having dogs for breakfast,lunch and dinner and also that Satish never finds out how close he came to sacrificing himself for the sake of science.