Encounters of the wild kind

 No, this post is not about encounters with terrorists. It is about encounters with wildlife in the erstwhile state of J&K. 

So, one of the first encounters I had was with a flying squirrel. One fine day, was walking along a track near the LC, and something actually flew across my eyeline from one tree to another. The first instinct ofcourse was to hit the ground and then look up where I see this little guy seemingly laughing at us because seeing me go down, my whole team also went down. Am sure that guy must have had a good laugh at us.

Next time it was a call at about 3am from a post saying that the sentry heard some suspicious movement close to the post, opened fire and nothing more was heard. This was the time when trans LC firing was at its peak as also trans LC raids were the norm. So, after alerting the nearby posts, tried to get some sleep when at first light I get a report from the same post that there was a dead porcupine in the area from where the sound was heard. The sentry had just fired one round and hit a porcupine at almost 30 m in pitch darkness. He was later suitably commended by the CO. That was the first time I got to taste a Porcupine. 

Next time, in the same location, I got a call from one post that a Cheetah( Leopard)had entered a civilians house. There was some event and everyone else was busy. I'd been left to 'man the fort'. So, we went to this house, a typical house in that area, along a slope, with the lower half built to house the cattle and the upper half to house the family with about 2feet thick walls(for protection against shelling).The house owner told us that early morning, he went to free the cattle for the day when he was pushed aside by this Cheetah(leopard) which then went inside his cattle shed. So he locked up the shed and rushed to inform the nearest post. I was more than slightly sceptical of the story, even more so when I peeked inside the cattle shed from the only opening, a so called window, and found that all the cattle were peacefully doing whatever they do and there was no sign of alarm. Having grown up reading Jim Corbett's stories, I confidently announced to the gathered villagers, that there's nothing. This confidence was shattered by my buddy when he came up behind me to say he saw something like a big dog hiding in the shadows behind a log. Immediately after clearing of the civilians and alerting my troops, I again went down to take a look and sure enough this time, I too spotted a head,the size of a football behind the log. Still thinking there maybe a chance that it's just an overgrown gaddi dog, we opened the doors to the cattle shed. It was when the 4/5 cows that came out in a virtual stampede that it dawned on me that there's something wrong. Half expecting to come face to face with a charging Leopard, leaving the door open, we withdrew to the window to have a better look and this time around could identify the Leopard. After waiting for about 15 to 20 mins when he showed no signs of moving away, one (bright) idea came to my head ie to scare it towards the door by throwing stones at it. Anyway, someone did try to instill some sense in me, but the boss is always right and so, I was hanging half in and half out of the window throwing stones at it when I sensed rather than saw it moving and it was coming straight at me. I barely had enough time to get out of the window before he came flying out. Both self and my buddy fired a burst each, (luckily we both had chambered rds with safety off) while it was still in the air and it collapsed on landing barely a couple of meters away. Later on we came to know that it had lost part of one foreleg in a mine blast that was quite an old injury and one hind leg which was still bleeding. That's why maybe it sought refuge in the village. Anyway, handed over the remains to the forest officer. But it was a beautiful specimen, we had measured it and it came out to be 8 feet plus from nose to the tip of the tail.

Some weeks later, got a call from a post saying sir, there is a Leopard on the post and he is looking for the Company Commanders dogs. Anyway, spoke to the officer, he had bolted his bunker from inside and was with his 2 dogs. He was told to ensure that no one else makes the same stupid mistake of throwing stones at it like I had done and maybe make some noise like banging of thalis etc. Anyway, it left. Still wonder what the Pakis would have thought when their opposite post started banging vessels instead of firing at them. Some new form of Psychological warfare? And now I'm wondering if PM Modi had come to know of this story from somewhere.

Next time was moving out for an operation in the dead of the night. Barely half an hour into the approx 8 hr walk, we heard a Leopard calling from somewhere behind but close. We tried to ignore and move on before realising that it had started following us. And believe me I've not seen a body of troops more alert ever in my life than on that night till we reached an open patch of defensible ground on the top of a mountain and he decided to move away. He must have followed us for atleast 4 hrs.

Next up, one night my telephone rings, and a boy from the officers mess is on the other end and is whispering 'Sahab, main officer mess ki guard par khada hun aur ek Cheetah mere saamne khada hai '. Being deep in sleep, I made some inane remarks and put down the phone. Was drifting off again when I realised what he'd said. There was a Leopard just 50 yards away from my door! As I was digesting this information, I realised that there was utter silence on the post which was unusual considering that we had atleast 6 to 7 local gaddi dogs on the post and invariably one odd would be barking at any given time. So, I called up the sentry again and asked him to explain to me in detail. So, he told me that he was at the door of the mess when suddenly Rani(one of the dogs) came running and lay down at his feet whimpering. So, he tried to pet her when he saw the Leopard barely 10 feet away and it was still there. I immediately organized a small party of 3/4 boys to come to my room with torches etc but by the time we covered the 50 odd meters, the Leopard had slunk away but Rani remained whimpering at the boys feet. Incidentally,  Rani had just given birth ro a litter of 5 pups 10 days prior to this incident. Next morning we were led by here to the spot where she'd kept her pups and we found a piece of a tail, one leg and some blood. The Leopard had had her pups for snacks and was following her when she reached the sentry. Anyway, atleast she survived. And the other full grown dogs with names like Sheru, Chaku  etc returned only after 10 odd days.

Cut to sometime later when was posted to Leh. Was doing first stage acclaimatisation, at our base when I heard the sound of partridges. I came out of my room to find a senior NCO also standing out there looking wistfully at a flock of partridges he says,' sahab bahut Patila Patila kar rahen hain . Kar den inki karyavahee' ? Didnt quite understand the Patila part but said no, no hunting. Later on when they started again, I realised that the sound that they were making actually resembled a person shouting Patila😀. Anyway, so they didnt end up in someone's Patila atleast not that day. In Leh had occasion to see the Ibex and various other animals but regretfully not the Snow Leopard. 

A few years later was back in Kashmir, and my then 4 yr old son came running into my office and excitedly shouted " Daddy, Leopard ne na cow ka kachurma bana diya " now, out of these I got Leopard, Cow but kachurma in this context I didnt get. So after some cajoling I got to know that the little one had gone for a walk with my buddy and the came across a half eaten cow barely 50 m from my room within the unit gate. So, kachurma. But this Leopard was quite interesting he used to carry out inspection of the Battalion HQ every night and finding everything to his satisfaction, would leave before morning. I came to know of his spiritual nature when one day, the unit Panditji requested me to put up a few concertina coils around the Mandir. After some prodding he came out with "Sahab main to Mandir mein hi sota hun ek bande ke saath aur roz raat ko yeh Leopard aapke mandir ke darvaze par baith jata hai. Aisa na ho kissi din humko hi Prasad samajh kar le jaye ". So the concertina coils were laid all around the mandir, but now, instead of sitting at the door, the Leopard used to sit outside the fence. He never molested anyone and we also let him be. Come rain, snow or whatever, every night for almost 2 years that we were there, he used to come for his inspection, sit in front of the mandir and go away before first light. 

One more incident comes to mind when in a search operation, one of my teams reported that they had come across a cave and were convinced that they had cornered atleast 2 terrorists since they could hear noises from inside. So, I told them to just estabilish a tight cordon and I started moving to the area. A few minutes later I got a call saying dont bother, its nothing. My interest piqued, I decided to wait till the team came back to my location. When they did reach back in the evening, the team leader recounted the story with tears of laughter, saying that as soon as he had spoken to me, the team was in the process of covering the mouth of the cave when they heard a couple of grunts and an extremely annoyed Bear came out and scattered them. He said it took him almost half an hour to get his team back together including cajoling a couple of boys who'd climbed up trees.

Many more experiences with wildlife in  J&K but for now, c'est fini!