With the two rebel wild macaques successfully moved on, all the monkeys and especially the Langur babies are actually still restricted in their walks and free romps in the garden, due to the banyan tree being in full fruit. This not only draws in lots more wild birds, but the local large troop of Langurs has taken up more or less permanent residence on our roof to take full advantage of the fruits. Among the ‘new’ birds is a different Hornbill, if not as stunning, a Malabar Grey.
On the cat front, poor Jingle bells, the kitten dumped at our gate on Christmas day, succumbed to cat flu. When so badly stressed, their immune system suffers and they are not able to fight infections. Dottie continues to do well and has been spayed. She has been joined by ‘Paris’, who took me four days to trap, in the fish market car park.
Paris when captured being white and cute looking, several children tried to catch him/her when first left there, and every time I tried to coax it out of hiding, some ‘helpful’ person would assist and succeed only in frightening it off. The local dogs also took up the sport of ‘catch the kitten’ and were gaily chasing it back down the holes when spotted out.
Sunanda And PipkinThis went on for three days with the kitten becoming ever more wary. Finally I had to set a trap by the rat holes it was now living down, and thankfully got it overnight. Since then it has been living in John’s bedroom, under the furniture mainly, but eating O.K., and coming out to sleep on bed at night. It will still take some days to recover enough from its trauma for us to even be able to tell its sex. Yet another kitten has joined our gang. This is a tiny five week old baby left with litter mates, by the time I found where they were hiding, directed by one of the fish sellers, only one was still alive. Pipkin is now doing fine, and being so young is less traumatised by his experiences and is even unfazed by our resident dogs and cats.
Monitor Lizard in Monkey Pen an unexpected arrival inside Butch,Cassidy and Sundance’s pen, a Monitor Lizard. The terrified monkeys were clustered, holding on to the roof of the pen, our dogs having spotted it were barking madly. Thinking it must be a snake several of us were searching the floor carefully, initially unaware of the giant 4 foot lizard hanging off the wire! He had obviously squeezed himself up the drainage pipe, but left quite easily once we showed him an open door.
