Morning Critter Encounters

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so."

Genesis 1:24

A Bird in Hand...

It was 5 am in the morning and I was lying on my bed reading Black Powder War by Naomi Novik when a fluttering noise intruded unceremoniously into the privacy of my room. I surfaced from Novik's para-Napoleonic era and looked upwards with bleary eyes, temporarily short-sighted from 5 hours of non-stop bookwormery¹.

At first, I could not find the source of this infernal fluttering till it was abruptly cut off by a loud metallic thud. Whatever that was fluttering about, flutters no more. The blade of the ceiling fan had seen to that.

My first reaction was to leap for the fan's switch in case the flutterer attempts a suicidal rematch². Then I began searching for the possibly KO'ed fluttering bugger, finding it half-dazed by the wardrobe (though apparently not dazed enough to stay put). It took a couple minutes of vigorous pre-dawn bedroom acrobatics before I managed to grab hold of what seemed to me like the most idiotic sparrow ever.

After checking the feathered nitwit for any obvious injuries, I put it in a pot and fricasseed it for breakfast brought it to the garden for a short, personal "Free Willy" moment. And no, it didn't feel as heartwarming as it did in the movie.

Ant-zilla

It's 50 times the size of those little black tykes that usually visit my room. I was clambering around the room tailing Goli-ant here with a camera when it crawled onto the hot tube of the fluorescent lamp and fried itself.

Crow and Cow

I spotted this duo one morning while jogging. The feathered one was probably grooming the beefy one by picking off ticks and stuff.

But if you see these two in person, you'd think the crow was pecking adamantly and repeatedly at the cow's head for some reason or other. It made for some pretty hilarious viewing.

Career Cows

Ever wondered who kept the grass neat and trimmed on the football field over at End Point? Big Mac and Whopper here, that's who!

Early Morning Family Fun

When I first came back to my Indian crib after the hols, I found the balcony covered in a foot-thick blanket of fallen leaves. So I swept them into a pile and shove them off mah property to the ground below, where the groundkeeper made a neat hill out of them.

The morning after, this is what happened to it;


Apparently, the resident bitches of Acharya Compound, Fifi and Family³, turned it into romping bed overnight. I thought it was pretty cute. The groundkeeper didn't think that at all and instead, swore a great deal in the local dialect.

The Friendliest Pup Ever

The canine population of Manipal is a really sedate lot - almost as tame as rabbits if you like. You can approach any dog and pet it without the fear of it taking a chunk out of your hand or arse. Occasionally, you might even find one that would follow you around, like this impish son-of-a-bitch⁴ here;


He'd meet me on my morning runs and would join me for a short 100 metres dash. That morning when I brought my camera along, I found out that he's a natural canine-camwhore as well. Sweet lil' critter, ain't he?


Amateur urban wildlife shutterbug,
k0k s3n w4i

¹ This is not a real word - but there's no reason it shouldn't be.
² Experience taught me that anything that flies tend to be quite air-headed - like bats, hot air balloons and air stewardesses.
³ Fifi is the black-and-white pup. The other two is her mom and grandmother (I don't really know which bitch is which).
⁴ Not to be confused with Fifi, which is a girl pup.