Monday, July 24, 2006

KING COBRA HATCHLINGS- THE LONG WAIT COMES TO A BEGINNING !















Gowri smiling at one of the hatchlings and welcomes the baby king to his kingdom!

AGUMBE HATCHINGS- THE LONG WAIT COMES TO A BEGINNING !

Gowri Shanker,herpetologist-Researcher at the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station was overcome with a mix of emotions of happiness and pure joy of seeing a new life begin in the woods of Agumbe where his strict vigil for three months paid off. He was tipped off by a local villager about a King cobra nest near thirthahalli in the month of May.Gowri, on visiting the nest found out that the mother had abandoned the nest due to human disturbances in that area.Since then , he kept the nest under his strict supervision, barricading it from the curious locals and recording the temperature and other vital data 4-5times a day for three long months. All his team's hard work had finally paid off on the 17th of July when the hatchlings came out hale and hearty.27 out of 28 eggs hatched successfully while one remained unhatched(unfertilized egg).He removed the hatchlings carefully, after measuring their weight and length he released them in wild, in a spot which has the perfect combination of temperature, safe habitat and prey.These are vital factors that will increase their chances of survival.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

WHAT KEPT ME AWAY PART II ...







We were sitting in Thirivanmaiyur( Madhu's house) and watching the video we took on our trip.It had come out pretty well.It was fun watching the video the hump-Nosed Pit Viper, the trek into the forest and the whole experience with Gowri. Following the personal preview show rolled out the dinner followed by reminiscence of the events we wanted to call Gowri and see what he was up to, and we called..
"Hey! Gowri how are you! " i shrieked " I Am good Showkath ,How about you? hows everyone else? inquired Gowri, "i was about to call you guys" he added" Really" I exclaimed "why whats up? "Saying that i was able to see madhu's face lighten up with excitement and mystery "I caught a 14ft King Cobra this Evening, had a call from near Thirthahalli, I was wondering if you were would wanna taka a look at it?" All we remember after hearing that was we both were sitting inside the 'Chennai -Bangalore-Mangalore' Jet Airlines flights, which left 6 hours after Gowri hung up not hearing anything from us on the other side of the call!
DAY 1
By the time we even realized what was happening we were in a taxi climbing the hills to ARRS!
It felt like we belonged here, the country side, the hills, the wind and the trees were enchanting. We got to Agumbe, with short honks we entered the compound of our previous host- Jenny Pai's house (who was shocked to see us again, cos it was only two days back, that we were outside her house waving our hands, saying a million Bye’s, Take care’s and thank you’s...) We Explained her what brought us back her so soon, “Its really heartening to see the level of enthusiasm you people share, am really impressed” She said( What weird, jobless morons these are!, is what she would have really thought!) We settled down with our luggage and waiting in anticipation of the rattling of Gowri's Marshall jeep- The only ' Inter Forest Shuttle Service'...We heard the horn, Gowri was on time to Jenny's house we hitched a rtide on his jeep and headed to ARRS. We picked up the King Cobra and went off to release him in the wild. The pictures above were taken during the release. It was an awesome sight and experience to see the King at such close proximity. It was an experience that we will never forget. We were spellbound! The only one who ever spoke in the next fifteen mins was Madhu , and all that she said was” It was a crazy, crazy day" She kept repeating the word crazy so many times that Gowri and me took three hours to get the word of our minds! That night Gowri cooked Chicken! Mmmm.. Yummy, trust me when I tell you that his Semi gravy Chicken is the best , better than my moms or even better what the Chettinad restaurants have to offer! We headed back to our homestay with a full tummy and a great experience!

Day 2 continued…


Sunday, July 16, 2006

WHAT KEPT ME AWAY !









AGUMBE –A Herpetologist’s Paradise

It all started with my friend's wedding in Udipi. We had to drive all the way from Chennai for this, so we thought we will club an exploration trip along with the wedding. Madhu identified this place near Udipi and vouched for it. These are the things she came up with when asked 'why Agumbe?'.
1. The wettest spot in south india, the Cherrapunji of south india,2.The place where Malgudi Days was shot 3,King cobra capital of the world! and that’s where our jaws dropped! Did you say King Cobra? we asked in awe,” Yes" she said " and a lot of them " she added....

So we left to Agumbe... That’s where we bumped into Mr.Gowri Shankar, herpetologist Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. Founded by Mr. Romulus Whitaker, to study King cobras,Rescuse and release and to make The king Cobra the Flagship species of the western ghats.Gowri Shankar is a great (cool) personality. Everybody in Agumbe knows him( i swear everybody from village heads to the scavengers, from cops to theives he knows them all!) An extremely social fella, knows all South Indian languages. Rom's choice of Gorwi to run ARRS is commendable. Madhu's choice to get to Agumbe got a standing ovation!

The exploration at this herpetologist's paradise started off with my first Hump-nosed pit viper(Hypnale hypnale) in the wild, it was a great experience to handle a wild one for the first time, we did see some ltm's , langs’s, Grey Hornbill and some interesting amphibians(including caecilians). A stream cut through the forest adjoining ARRS, we trekked down following the stream along with Gorwi and Sharmila in search of Malabar pit vipers. Luck favored us with only a pit into which fell, one of the MIT students who came along with us.
We returned to Chennai due to time constraint.

The second time we got there in a hurry,

YES! somewhere in the bushes ,there was a 14 feet King waiting for us. Contd…

Friday, July 07, 2006

IF MEN ARE FROM MARS ... where did these guys come from?

Ok, this is really weird. For the record I’ am not a MCP nor a feminist, I am not taking sides here but just trying to analyze where all these people on this good earth came from and if they are still coming? To start with, if the saying "men are from mars and women are from Venus" is only a metaphor arising out of the fact that the associated words start with the same sounds, then lets kindly accept the little population who came from Uranus!

These are two different planets (heavenly bodies) millions of kilometers apart, I wonder how they even met? Were they like Olive Ridley turtles that come from different parts of the world to the Indian coast just to breed? Well, scientists all over the globe are still baffled about how these primitive creatures find their way back to the same place to breed every year. There could be only two possible reasons a) they have extremely sophisticated navigation system (better than the ones the USA uses to find oil wells in poor countries) tucked under their soft shells which guides them to their breeding grounds, or b) the Indian coast is so arousing to these turtles that they instantly decide to mate upon reaching the Bay of Bengal. I wonder why their shells don’t get a hard on while swimming along the naked beaches of the Caribbean? We are drifting.

So my point is that if Earth is the breeding ground of these aliens from Mars and Venus, how did they even get here in the first place? Did they have erstwhile state-of-the-art space shuttles with Turtle-tech-Navigation system (we have evidence of these 100000 B.C model shuttles being bought by India from the Americans) or were they, these hundreds of turned on aliens flying aimlessly in outer space? This does throw some light on Male chauvinism, that the men all over the world are spending millions and billions of their respective currencies to find if there is or there was, life on mars, but nobody bothers to find if there is any trace of sexy alien life on Venus. This clearly goes to prove that we don’t care where the hell women came from!

Since I’m running out of thoughts to continue typing on this topic I will stop here with just one social message, that the books on this topic must be banned , cos they are so powerfully influential that they actually make us forget what we were taught in our high school Bio-Geography that is " All men and women came and still come only from those two tiny twin planets hanging between the bipeds of the male species which forms the center of the universe of the female of this species... that explains the reprise of the big bang*!

* The big bang theory states that it’s not a single time event that occurred in the beginning of the creation of all things, but keeps occurring every time there is an urgency to create life on earth. The phenomenon has been evolving so efficiently that the bang got mightier day by day leading to many inventions like concrete walls in houses and hotels, sturdier cars, soundproofing techniques! And spinal injuries.



The Return Of The KING!

















THE RETURN OF THE KING !
















Salaams to all!

Good to see you again. I know its been a while since my last update and am certain that you will be thrilled to read about the various things that kept me from updating this blog. Well, it would have been possible for me to manipulate the settings of the blog and date it to April and continue with the incidents as it happened. But, in the interest of the few frequent visitors of this site( i dont want them to believe that they just woke up from a 2 month long Coma) i would state the incidents with individual dates. The pictures you see above are only the beginning... Strap your Seat Belts up, as the story takes you into termite nests and rabbit holes , twisting and turning around river beds , taking you up the forest canopy. Get ready for an adventure, an experience that engulfs you completely sucking out your vital fluids... as the KING RETURNS!

Soon.