*The Shivalik foothills are an arena for some amazing natural history moments featuring the audacious and pugnacious predator, the Bengal Monitor lizard (Goh). The lizard might not be born into a blue-blooded lineage like the tiger or the King cobra but it is an agile tree hunter and poses a formidable challenge for natural predators who want to hunt it down. Two episodes from Wednesday illustrate this unglamorous predator’s little known and under-rated capabilities.
The first episode took place in the Shivalik jungles behind the Tricity. A wildlife guard chanced upon a frantic pair of Rose-ringed parakeets squawking in utter vain as they circled their nest hole high up in a tree. A thick, tapering tail dangling out of the nest hole told its own tail. It was a Goh that had adeptly climbed the tree and had slithered nose-down into the deep nest. The parakeet fledglings inside the hole were looking at a “monster” coming at them. It was a horrific moment for the family, the cozy nest home turning into a chamber of horrors, the sunlight shaded by a looming, remorseless killer.
Even as the parent parakeets did their damnedest to heckle and repel the lizard, the hunter got to its prey. The lizard caught hold of a fledgling and backed out quickly from the nest hole. It then flung the terrified fledgling onto the ground below before slithering down. The lizard was not going to gobble the fledgling on the tree but on the ground knowing the little one could not fly.
However, there was a twist to the tale. The wildlife guard, himself a father, could not bear the piteous spectacle of the squawking little one trying to vainly hide in the bushes. The guard “played god” and chose to “rescue” the fledgling from the “cruel lizard’s clutches”. The little one, having recovered its wits somewhat with the lizard now at bay, perched cockily on the guard’s thigh. The guard replaced the fledgling in its nest. Though the lizard is granted full “rights” by nature to put other’s babies to sword, the human heart is essentially weak, nurtures misplaced sympathies and perceives the world through a self-indulgent prism. The lizard’s food had been snatched from its mouth, its hard hunting work awaste. Should it have gone hungry?
{{/usCountry}}However, there was a twist to the tale. The wildlife guard, himself a father, could not bear the piteous spectacle of the squawking little one trying to vainly hide in the bushes. The guard “played god” and chose to “rescue” the fledgling from the “cruel lizard’s clutches”. The little one, having recovered its wits somewhat with the lizard now at bay, perched cockily on the guard’s thigh. The guard replaced the fledgling in its nest. Though the lizard is granted full “rights” by nature to put other’s babies to sword, the human heart is essentially weak, nurtures misplaced sympathies and perceives the world through a self-indulgent prism. The lizard’s food had been snatched from its mouth, its hard hunting work awaste. Should it have gone hungry?
{{/usCountry}}The same day but a considerable distance apart, Khushjiv Singh Sethi, a Mohali-based wildlife photographer and an electronics industrialist, came upon a clash of the titans at Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand. He saw a King cobra slither across the jungle track and latch onto something amid a pile of broken trees. It emerged that the cobra had taken a firm grip of the neck / head of a Goh. Sethi expected it was all over for the lizard and that the cobra --- reckoned as the world’s longest venomous snake --- would commence ingestion of the hapless prey.
However, the encounter which lasted only a minute, had a surprise packed in. “In a twinkling of the eye, the tables turned. The ferocious lizard was not willing to become an easy prey. It launched a counter-attack by shrugging off the cobra’s grip on its neck and bit firmly into the cobra’s lower jaw. The cobra was now in acute distress. Somehow or the other, the cobra managed to free its jaw from the lizard’s grip. Choosing not to join issue further with the lizard, the mighty serpent beat a hasty retreat from its hunting ground,” Sethi told this writer.
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