Unimaginable Love
Where Meeny came from , I'll never know, but I remember her arrival at Damur Hills, my home in a part of northeast India, in early 1969. That morning I was sitting on a river bank, when I noticed a gang of road workers passing by, behind them was a diminutive sand coloured creature like a jackal. Only its twisting of tail and standing straight proved it was a dog.π
But I saw a pair of lustrous,innocent eyes and as they ingratiatingly accepted a piece of toast. Her peculiar size made me name her Meeny.
She seemed happy to stay with me. As we set off to daily walks,our first step took us into the domain of forest animals. The forest full of dangers specially for a dog like Meeny. For instance, leopards love showing dominance on dogs and rate them high on list of targets. But, Meeny's instincts served her well and she assessed her new environment quickly.
But to bring a leopard into the household seemed more audacious. Nevertheless, I had no hesitation to bring in a three month old leopard cub that had been abandoned in Bihar and reared in Calcutta by two famous conservationist and my friends. My aim was to raise him and set him free into the wild.
But Meeny didn't like the idea that's why when Lorne came ,she immediately tried to nip the cub in the rump and remained aggressive all day. The second day was quite calmer. By the third day both the leopard whom I called Lorneπ and Meeny πwent off together to explore the nearby bushes. Acceptance seemed complete. They both were sleeping together and growing up made it easier to forge links of friendship between two species.
They would set off to hunt together in the forest and made a good team. Once they caught a young chital stag but displayed immaturity by coming in search of me letting the chital go away.
Once a zoo owner advised me that bird features are important form of roughage for leopards. So i would take my rifle and set out to should birds for them. Meeny and Lorne learned quickly and associated the sound of the shot to a fall of a bird. But it was only a week after which i realized the futility of this as once i saw Lorne carefully plucking feathers of a dove and rejecting the allegedly indispensable roughage.
One mornig a month later, we found the hungry leopard guarding his first kill, a full grown chital hind but was astonished to see him driven off his own kill by his small companion. I would have never thought such a thing to be possible because the leopard was dead hungry and the kill was his. It was a amazing display of forbearance on the leopard's part as he could easily disable any other creature for such interference. Yet there was no sign of it , such was the trust and affection between Meeny and Lorne. It was as if a unlikely bond formed that species ceased to matter at all.
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