Leopards’ head stuck in the cage

As a wildlife vet posted with Wildlife Trust of India’s MVS unit in Bandipur Tiger Reserve, I have handled quite a few strange and some rather amusing cases. I once spent an hour convincing a man that his tortoise was dead and not hibernating. The fact that it wasn’t breathing, was very rigid and had begun to smell had somehow eluded the owner. Another case I was called out on a couple of weeks ago was quite the doozy!

My team and I were at the Mysore zoo where we had just dropped off a female elephant calf that had been abandoned by the mother. The baby was found in the middle of the forest near an anti-poaching camp in Bandipur Tiger Reserve trumpeting out for her mother. She was followed by a Forest Department team for three days in the hope that she would find her herd, but she just kept coming back to the camp. The Department tried locating the herd but after almost two days of search, it was confirmed that the herd had wandered across the border into Kerala and any attempt of reunification would be futile.

The elephant calf that was abandoned

Just as we were finishing up at the Mysore Zoo, I received a call from a forest official on the outskirts of Mandya district in Karnataka, asking us if we could help him with a problem relating to a conflict leopard. As the area fell out of my jurisdiction, I asked for permission to accompany the Forest Department Vet and rushed to the spot. We found a very large and angry male leopard caught in a cage who while trying to escape managed to get his head stuck in the bars.

Needless to say, he was pretty annoyed considering he was stuck in the bars all day. He was trapped outside a village where he had killed several livestock over a period of three months. The villagers were obviously infuriated and sensing the mood of the place, the entire trap cage along with the leopard was loaded onto a tempo and immediately taken to safety, to prevent the villagers from killing the animal. The leopard was brought to an inspection bungalow on the outskirts of the town in a forested area.

Welder fixing the cage

On our way to the site, we picked up a welder and on reaching the spot instructed him to set up his equipment. The Forest Department vet’s compounder – Action Akram (as I like to call him) -climbed into the tempo and tried to inject the leopard with sedative on the thigh and the neck. Every time he got close enough, the leopard would turn his face towards him and try to rip him apart. Eventually, I distracted the beast with a stick which he bit down on and reduced it to splinters. Meanwhile, Action Akram found the opportunity and gave the animal a shot on the neck.

We waited a while and soon after he dozed off, the cage was unloaded from the tempo with the help of a dozen FD staff. Thereafter, we started to cut through the bars of the cage to release the leopards’ head. After almost 15 minutes of sawing, we managed to free his head and noticed that the animal was gaining consciousness with the stress and the constant noise of the hacksaw cutting through metal. We had to give him a second dose of sedative after which we pulled him back into the cage. The welder got into position only to find there was no power.

The leopard free at last

This left us in a bit of a quandary as we had already cut through the bars and unless we fixed the cage, the leopard would have squeezed himself out of it. The leopard was only mildly sedated and we had to work fast to get the job done to prevent him from escaping and hurting anyone in the process. The FD official in-charge suggested connecting the welding machine to the backup power supply of the inspection bungalow which was 100 metres away.

We hauled the cage and the welding equipment across to the side of the house and passed wires through a window and connected them to the UPS. There was very little battery power and we had to find a way to finish the job with as little electricity as possible. So, every time the welder wanted to weld, he yelled out to a person standing by the UPS in the house to connect the wires to the battery. He would yell out again as soon as he stopped so the wires could be disconnected. When he started welding, we noticed sparks flying onto the leopard. To save him from getting burnt, I passed a tarpaulin sheet through the bars in order to cover his head. I also poured water on him to keep any stray sparks from singeing him. As I got close, he growled — a low rumbling rattle that made the air in my chest vibrate – and I wrenched my arms out of the cage as quickly as I could. He was still sedated but managed to give me quite a fright.

After welding the bars, we moved the cage back onto the tempo and wrapped it with the tarpaulin sheet. The leopard was up on his feet in no time, trying to squeeze his way out of the other end of the cage. We pushed the cage up close to the back of the tempo so he wouldn’t get his head caught in it again and hurriedly sorted permissions from the senior forest officials to release him back into the wild. He was taken to a secluded spot in a forest, away from villages and released within a few hours of the operation.

All in all, it was a rather odd day.