High School Cats!

By now most of you know about this Tigeress and her 4 cubs.Naturally she has to kill regularly to keep up with the appetite of her cubs.So the previous evening she had killed a spotted deer stag in a depression not distracted by the crowd of people gathered watching her early evening.We were having a calm afternoon at a waterhole oblivious to this excitement.But a chance of catching up with this family today morning was not something we wanted to miss.Beides we anticipated that the tigeress would have brought all 4 cubs from a place where she would have left them when hunting to the spot where she had dinner ready for them.They would have happily fed in the unheckled dark of the night.But a chital stag would not last long amongst 5 tigers.So no sooner had we reached the spot we saw the tigeress coming out of the woods.She knew what she was doing.She got on the road and stopped and was looking back.And obediently one by one the cubs came out.They all gave us a few looks but caught up with mother.She led them into the woods again.Inevitably alarm calls started as the family was making its way in the forest.Out of our sights we were tracking them for about an hour and again them emerged from the forest about 3 kms away near a water hole and went inside the forest.A tigeress knows her territory scrupulously and led them away from a traffic-jam.But just as this family was disappearing in the jungle,we got a message that a leopard was spotted up a tree near where the tigers was originally found.So we quickly made our way to the spot.And sure enough the leopard was about 15 ft up on a tree.It might have come scavenging on the left overs of the chital carcass but may be it would have got fresh smell of the tigers and not wanting to take chances with 5 tigers had wisely decided to find a safe perch.Safe as it was it was a great treat to a huge Sunday crowd.It seemed like a young male and hence finding his bearing on how to cohabit with tigers.He sat up there for about 30 minutes not very relaxed and uncomfortably balanced on forking branches constantly looking down and about.The monkeys on neighboring branches were probably laughing at him as they continued to feed,but as it finally gathered courage and climbed down they went up in alarm.We had a hectic Big-Cat morning and were not complaining.But it shows how carcasses can attract predators and its not always safe place to be around.

Posted: Baghvan by Vrushal Pendharkar, Date: 29 November 2009

 
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