Tuskers 'in charge'

 Place - Mysore, Karnataka. 
Time: 5.30 AM round-about. 
June- 08-2011

The traditional City, Mysore woke up with people taking morning walks, buying newspaper/milk. And what they saw! The scenes like these!

People tried alerting the forest officials. But, the run-riot had already begun. This behavior of elephants is totally bizarre! they do not enter cities usually. The skirmishes with the humans in the elephant corridor are quite common. But why did they come into the city where they do not find any food to eat? Were they enraged because they were chased off by the farmers? God only knows!

One of the elephants encountered a cow tied to pole on its way. It started charging at it violently. Poor cow was tied to its destiny. 

Cow fought valiantly. Each time it was rammed by the tusker, it gathered on its feet. Till the final blow came when the tusker pierced it's body. It fell. People who were witnessing the scene were whistling, making sounds, clapping etc. probably to divert the elephant. It only maddened the elephant. 

For people, it was just pell-mell. 

The younger tusker went deeper into the city. Where people would not have expected an elephant (of all the animals) on the streets. There stood an innocent security guard who was watching this elephant with amusement( like many other people ). I really

wonder what went wrong, the elephant just ran into him, threw him on the ground, pierced him. 

Many attempts of people to divert, did not work again. 

I can quite possibly understand, if a mahout is killed by an elephant because he might have ill-treated the elephant sometime.
But, what did this security guard do? What about the Cow?
The person who had tied the cow to the pole must be feeling miserable at its gory fate.

Later the elephants were tranquilized and left in the forest.

As I saw in today's news paper, the headlines says "1 man killed" and the cow's death takes a corner. That is the respect we have for the animals!

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In the same light, I remembered an incident. This happened when we went to a wild-life safari in a jeep. On a rainy morning, we spotted a herd of elephants. This herd had 2 baby elephants and 4 adults.

                                                              <Image from the internet.>

Our idiotic driver wanted to make the elephants charge at the jeep. He deemed it to be a  thrilling experience. He was honking like crazy, and accelerating with the brakes pressed just to irritate the elephants. Yes. They were scared. They ran into the forest trumpeting, choosing to go away from us.

But, what if the elephants had really charged?

1) There was only one route, backwards into the sloppy, muddy roads. The only way to go was in the reverse gear. If we had got stuck (high possibility) no one would have survived. Let me remind you, there were 4 adult elephants.

2) Elephants are even more dangerous when they have calves with them. They are very very protective and can get easily infuriated.

That day, we were really lucky to have escaped.

In case, you are chased by an elephant. What can you do?

a) If a man chooses to run, one should remember that elephants can easily outrun a man. The only way to escape can be, to run in a zig-zag path. The path traced should be zig-zag for the elephant not for the man. :D It takes time for the elephant to shift weight from one direction to another.  

b) If one decides to hide, one has to make sure that the wind direction is not towards the elephant. Because elephants can smell people out.

Respect animals, Save wild life. Sad when such incident happen. Man v/s Wild :(