7 hours ago
Lone leopard baffles 100 humans in eight-day search
Vadodara: A leopard that mauled a nine-year-old girl to death on May 29 in Narmada district was finally captured, but not before playing a perplexing hide-and-seek game with a team of 100-strong rescuers for nearly eight days.
The seven-year-old wild cat defied the textbook conventions of shyness as it simply refused to take the easy escape route through the rugged ravines of Narmada and instead stayed put in the sugarcane field despite the presence of so many people around.
The elaborate rescue efforts, which began in Bedi Pani village of Sagbara taluka on the night of May 29, culminated with the leopard being caged on the night of June 7. Forest officials said this was the longest rescue operation for a leopard in recent memory.
During this intense drama, the leopard left the forest staff astonished with its endurance as tranquiliser shots also failed to subdue it. In fact, villagers reported that the leopard came knocking on their doors, literally; sometimes pawing or nudging with its head.
"Leopards usually don't behave like this. Most would simply escape from the spot the moment they realise that they are being chased. But this leopard just refused to budge.
by Taboola
by Taboola
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Undo
It kept moving from one part of the field to another despite the presence of a large search team," said Dhaval Patel, Assistant Conservator of Forests (ACF), Sagbara.
A team from the forest department even shot the leopard with tranquilisers two to three times, but even that didn't knock out the wild cat. Instead, it disappeared into the sugarcane crop. Even the drones couldn't capture its movements.
"It was one of the longest rescue operations I did.
It was very strange behaviour by a wild animal that is known to be very intelligent," said Siddharth Amin of Life with Wildlife Foundation, who was part of the rescue team with Vaibhav Patel. The duo did route tracking of the leopard with a drone, collected data, and helped the forest officials in the operation.
"Sometimes the leopard used to hide on the trees in a crematorium behind the fields. We had to be careful as leopards are known to attack if they feel they are in danger.
Our team had to chop off some portion of the sugarcane crop to spot the leopard and trap it with a net," Patel added.
Patel said the leopard was hunting hens from a farm nearby, and it's possible that it didn't wish to leave as it got easy food and water in the area.
This leopard first attacked and killed a nine-year-old girl in Kolvan village adjoining Bedi Pan on May 29. It hid in the sugarcane fields in the village before attacking the girl who was playing near the fields with her sister. The leopard then attacked a 42-year-old woman in Beda Pani village when she was sitting inside her home.
