Mutts moments...

MUTTS © 2009 Patrick McDonnell

Tiger Diary ~ Pink as a Lotus Flower

Fabled Ranthambhore National Park, Rajasthan, India...

Early morning. The dawn mists are just starting to rise, the sun is cool and low. The stillness and quiet are other-worldly. This forest feels complete, with its Eden-like herds of chital and sambar deer, pre-historical crocodiles, birds of every description, black-faced langur monkeys... and every blade of golden grass, every dusty rock and leaf, every crooked tree informed by the presence of the tiger.

Our jeep stops on the rocky shores of Rajbagh Lake. Twenty yards out in deep water, an enormous sambar stag munches aquatic plants. An egret stands on its back -- the pair are amusing and regal at the same time. In the blink of an eye, the egret lunges for something in the water, and hops back on to the sambar's back, frog legs visible on either side of the rapier beak. "Tiger," hisses a companion in the jeep. Sure enough, far across the lake, a tiger has come down to the water's edge. She drinks. Then, stepping into the water, she leaps, tail flying for balance, from rock to rock to an island in the middle of the lake.

"She has left her cubs well-hidden in the grass," said a friend, versed in the ways of Ranthambhore's tigers, "and is now 'going to the store' for them."

The tigress, which had disappeared in the tall golden grass on the island, now reappears on the shore quite near us. She drinks again. This time I see her tongue, pink as the pinkest lotus flower, lapping the water. Ripples spread across the surface. With one stride, water streaming from her chin, she is across the last shallow stretch of lake, walking up the dusty track in front of our jeep. Tigers love to use jeep tracks! We follow, slowly, and at a respectful distance. She is utterly indifferent to our presence, striding, tail in an elegant, catty curve, back long and thin, head low between her muscled shoulders. A striped cat.

At the top of the hill she comes to a sudden stop. Our driver brakes, several yards behind her. There is a magnificent view here. For a long moment, she stands, motionless, head up, ears forward, gazing out at Padam Talao Lake in the distance, the craggy remains of Ranthambhore's medieval fortress a blue haze on the cliffs above. Her tail flicks upwards. Padding slowly down the track, she pauses from time to time, head lifted to catch the scent-bearing breeze, gazing toward far-off deer in the shallows of Padam Talao. She disappears in brush.

We find her again ten minutes later. She is lying down, stretched out under a canopy of trees across a track. But this is no sleeping tigress. She alternates between resting her head on the ground, and lifting it, listening intently. She is "lying low." We sit a little way down the track and wait with her, chatting in the subdued but excited whispers of tiger-lovers near a tiger. Our whispering ceases abruptly as we see her suddenly rise and crouch, in one fluid motion. We had thought she had drifted off to sleep! With one great leap, she is into the thick undergrowth at the side of the track. A second later, we hear two choking, yelping cries, which can only be the sounds of a deer being throttled.

In a quick flurry of dust and grinding gears, our driver turns and re-positions the jeep along a parallel track where the tigress may show herself again. We wait, breathlessly, staring down the long, narrow track, tall grass on the right, trees on the left. The seconds tick by, stretching into minutes. Just as each of us begins to wonder whether we have seen the last of her, a collective gasp rises from the jeep. An enormous tiger head has popped out of the grass. Clutched in her jaws is the throat of a chital stag. She is panting with the effort of dragging her kill through the thick undergrowth. She lays the chital between enormous paws, and gazes down the track toward us, mouth open, tongue moving in and out with her breathing, sides heaving. For a moment or two, we watch these two magnificent heads in profile, framed by the golden grass: the predator, catching her breath, the anticipation of her next effort reflected in amber eyes, and the wide-open, darker eyes of her prey, still liquid and beautiful in death.

The tigress turns her head again, but pays us no more mind than she would a tree or rock. Absent-mindedly, almost tenderly, she lowers her head and licks the chital's cheek. A moment later, jaws around the chital's throat once more, and with all four legs straddling the deer's inert body, she hauls her prize across the track. Dream-like, she disappears.

~ Jen Scarlott, January 2001

(Photo: Aditya Singh, Ranthambhore)

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.

~ The Buddha

(Odilon Redon, Le Bouddha, c. 1905)

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~Wendell Berry

John James Audubon, Great Blue Heron

Photos & Quotes ~ Prairie dogs

In 1950, government agents proposed to get rid of prairie dogs on some parts of the Navajo Reservation in order to protect the roots of sparse desert grasses and thereby maintain some marginal grazing for sheep.

The Navajo elders objected, insisting, "If you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain."

The amused officials assured the Navajo that there was no correlation between rain and prairie dogs and carried out their plan. The outcome was surprising only to the federal officials. The desert near Chilchinbito, Arizona, became a virtual wasteland. Without the ground-turning process of the burrowing animals, the soil became solidly packed, unable to accept rain. Hard pan. The result: fierce runoff whenever it rained. What little vegetation remained was carried away by flash floods and a legacy of erosion.

~ Terry Tempest Williams, Finding Beauty in a Broken World

Earth Heroes ~ Alan Rabinowitz

Earth heroes! People who are passionate about nature, in one form or another: wildlife, climate change, humane treatment of animals, you name it. A favorite of mine is wildlife conservationist and author Alan Rabinowitz.

Alan is currently President and CEO of Panthera, a cat conservation organization based in New York. Though he works hard to save cats (tigers, jaguars, leopards, lions, snow leopards, etc), Alan is as stalwart an ally of a tortoise or a butterfly as he is a big carnivore. One of the (many) amazing things about Alan is that until he was in college, he had such a severe stutter that he could barely talk. As a child, he made a promise to his pets that if he ever found his voice, he would speak for them. Through sheer grit and determination, Alan mastered his stutter. And then he kept his promise to animals.

During explorations in remote northern Burma (Myanmar) in 1997, Alan discovered a new species, the diminutive leaf deer (Muntiacus putaoensis).

If you are looking for a book that will keep you up all night, pick up a copy of Jaguar: One Man's Struggle to Establish the World's First Jaguar Preserve.

When you're done, I guarantee you'll be irresistibly drawn to Alan's other books about his fascinating career. And maybe to finding a way to be part of his efforts.

Mannahatta! Natural Jungle to Urban Jungle

Did you know that in 1609, just before Henry Hudson sailed into New York harbour and up the Muhheakantuck River (the Lenape Indian name for the estuary later named for Hudson --"muhheakantuck" means "river that flows both ways"), Manhattan was covered in lush temperate forests, gurgling springs, beaver meadows, and the occasional Indian settlement (computer-generated photo, above right!)? Any city dweller with a passion for nature will find the research of Dr. Eric Sanderson (Wildlife Conservation Society) into the nature of New York City before Europeans arrived absolutely intoxicating. Teachers will find a wealth of curricular materials for their classrooms!

Are there more of this beauty?

In February '09, this lovely rare quail was photographed in the Philippines for the first time before being sold in a poultry market. A local birdwatching group, the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines, found the quail at a public market in the Caraballo mountains. The bird was being sold as a food item by locals.

The Worcester's buttonquail (Turnix worcesteri) is found only on the island of Luzon, and until this photo was taken, was known only through drawings based on museum specimens collected decades ago. Scientists had suspected the species was extinct. Michael Lu, president of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines, said he hoped the fate of this bird will raise people's consciousness about threatened wildlife, asking "What if this was the last of its species?" Experts at Birdlife International said that the Worcester's buttonquail belongs to a shy and elusive family of birds, and hopefully, other members of the species survive undetected.