An animal life

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had adventures with animals. They are a part of my life. The first animal encounter I can remember is me and a dead rat. I do understand that this sounds quite weird and disgusting, but it's true. We, my maternal grandparents, my mum and me, lived in an old house in Shankarapuram, in south Bangalore. It had a big garden with a Litchi tree and lots of "wild"life. It was in this garden that, while playing with the neighbours, that I discovered the rat. Let's call him Rattie shall we? Now Rattie was lying in the mud waiting to decompose, as all dead creatures do, when I picked him up. I must have been about three years old, as I was physically big enough to hold him, yet young enough to not understand the concept of death. I must have thought he was asleep or something.

I could never catch a squirrel or any other small animal, so this was a major achievement for me. I took Rattie to meet my grandmother, like I would any friend I had made, and I remember her horrified shriek. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why she was screaming. As far as I knew, she was pretty fond of animals herself, so I must have been confused. I don't know how, but somehow Rattie went away to a place I cannot remember, probably the dustbin down the road. My hands were washed till they were a bright red colour and I suddenly became a Red Indian in the literal sense.

Today, thinking back, knowing what I know, I shudder to think of all the diseases I may have caught, the ants, the smell of the decomposing body, the fleas and ticks that may have been on the rat and everything else that makes you run to the loo and empty the contents of your stomach.

Maybe as a child, I was forgiving of the smell and the various insects. As for the diseases, I was thankfully ignorant. I have been told that my life has revolved around animals even before the Rattie fiasco. I would apparently yell, as a baby, when I heard the jingle of the bullock cart as it went down the street, and quiet down only when I saw those majestic animals – the oxen. My first animal attack though was from chicken apparently (if you know me, you’d have guessed a cow). Those infernal birds, for some strange reason, took offense to my grandfather and me walking down the road. I was in the pram and it was my poor grandfather who had to fight off the nasty squawking, pecking birds and save me. I think that is quite heroic. If I had to choose between my legs and a baby, I sure as heck would choose my legs!

Spring at my grandmother's house was always greeted with the arrival of the monkeys. They would go straight for the Litchi tree (taking away all the yummy fruit) and this resulted in my grandmother and me yelling at them while running a stick on the veranda grill, making as much noise as possible. As you can imagine, to a child of five or six, this was good fun! Even to a young woman of 23, this is good fun, I must say. I would secretly pray that the monkeys would come, even though I knew this would upset my grandmother.

Because our house was an old one, it retained the charm of having many lofts. These lofts were often next to windows, which could only mean squirrels. I would do my best to not alert anyone of the squirrels nesting, until it was too late. This would upset my family, I knew not why, but they would not move the nest if there were already babies in it. Today, looking back, I get where my family was coming from, because a nest meant things like cockroaches and all kinds of other insects, not to mention the fleas and ticks.

When I was about seven, I think my mother realised, that no matter what she did or how hard she tried to keep me away from all the stray animals, she would fail. She then got me my first pets. I had a pair of love birds. I cannot for the life of me remember what they were called, so for now, let us name them what I would call them if I had them now - Addison and Kevin. This was a great source of joy and entertainment to me. They were green and blue.

Unfortunately, the neighbourhood cat learned of these birds and decided to try to make a meal out of them. If you've seen old houses in Bangalore, you will know that there isn't really a peephole at the door, but a sort of slit in the wall next to the door. This slit was big enough for the cat to jump in and out. After catching the cat near the screeching birds a few times, my mum came up with a solution. We put an empty tin can in the slit, so that the cat would knock it over when it came in. This worked for a while, until I came home to find one of the birds dead. We released the other bird into the wild and I said bye-bye to pets for a few years.