It was 7:45 am and as you know, carnivores are most active between 5:30 am to 7:00 am and our hopes of getting a carnivore sighting were dwindling by the minute. Since it was a bright and sunny day, we knew that there was a chance of something showing up at the waterhole to quench it?s thirst, and so we patiently sat in the jeep, waiting for any signs of life. We could see a handsome Sambar stag approach the waterhole gingerly, it then bent down and drank from the pond, hardly 20 feet away from us.
As we sat there enjoying the sight, all of a sudden, we heard the alarm calls of the spotted deer coming from the other waterhole, which was around half a KM from where we were. The engine came ON and we moved as silently as possible towards the source of the calls, which by this time had reached fever pitch! We were excited because multiple deer were calling all at the same time, and we knew that it was not a case of mistaken identity? and listening to the calls, it was clear that the source of the alarm was indeed a Tiger!
We reached the spot in less than 2 minutes and we could see the herd of deer looking into the thick grass, straining their necks, stamping their hoofs and continuing to call. I stood up on the seat and peered through the thicket only to see the grass and nothing more. Since there was no road to get any closer, we decide to switch the engine off and wait it out, hoping that whatever had caused the alarm, would come out sooner than later. The deer kept calling looking at the same direction, and it gave us a clear indication on where to focus as the three of us scoured the landscape intently for any sort of movement. And then we saw her behind the large fallen tree, with a half-dead wild boar in her vice-like grip! We could only see her partially, as she was crouched on the wild boar, pinning it down under her weight amidst the long dry grass.
Looking around, it was clear that as soon as she finished the job, she would move it under a tree or take it to the shade, and she?d do that not just to get out of the sun, which was quite harsh by now, but also to hide the kill from other animals and birds. The way she was holding the boar down indicated that the boar was indeed a full-grown animal and she would have difficultly dragging the kill through the bushes. Keeping this in mind, we looked around for any sort of game trail which she could take once she started moving. The prominent game trail towards our left wasn’t all that hard to find and we silently reversed the jeep so that we could see her clearly when? if she decided to come out of the grass.
Wild boars formidable opponents and notoriously hard to kill, and it took a good 15 minutes for the Tigress to make sure that the boar was finally dead. I remember watching her stand up, panting in the sun, and almost immediately her gaze fell on our jeep, as she stood there starting at us intently with her mouth wide open. We sat in the jeep motionless not to attract any sort of attention, and soon she decided it was too hot for her to be out there in the open. We saw her bending down, clamp her jaws around the neck of the wild boar, picking it up, and then, as though it was scripted well before, she dragged the kill to the game track and started walking straight towards us, with the dead boar hanging from her jaws!
I?ll let the pictures do the talking ?
An interesting adventure from the jungles of Wayanad.
Anil
