Wild Places And Instincts 21st February 2017

A busy time here still with lots of visitors from the nearby holiday resorts. Even after many trips to Goa, some people have still never seen the wild monkeys, that inhabit the less built up areas, and a trip out into a bit of wilder India to visit us, is a revelation to many. Here, herds of water buffalo still roam the roads, exotic looking wild birds can be seen, and of course the troops of wild monkeys. In the big resort towns, and beaches, you could really be almost anywhere in the world.

Quite by chance, we got proof of an animal’s natural instincts, still hidden deep in their brains. Raj who has spent his entire life till coming here, indoors, and was taken from his mother as a tiny baby, perfectly demonstrated this to us. To try and prevent the some 70 strong troop of wild monkeys from regularly smashing the roof tiles and destroying the satellite dishes, I had purchased some life like plastic toy snakes. These I strategically placed in the worst affected areas, to try and deter them from doing further damage, all wild monkeys will give a snake a wide berth. The two puppies, Squidge and Spats are at the stage where they are chewing up everything, and they found one of these, leaving the remains on the pathway where Raj goes for his walks. When he refused to go on his usual trip round the garden, we were at first puzzled, then realised he had spotted the mangled snake remains , and was not going to walk past it for anything ,even though he has probably never seen a real one , or had any reason to know they are to be avoided.

In the UK , there is a well known slogan used by animal rescue groups, “a dog is for life, not just for Christmas” Here in Goa, a local rescue group have been using the slogan “gift someone a puppy this Christmas “ Good, permanent homes here are very hard to find for the many puppies, dumped still everyday as unwanted. I recently homed one I had picked up in the local market, with a local family, who had asked me to find them a nice puppy to adopt. They took the cute little chap home and were very happy with him it seemed, later that evening, he was re-dumped here, he was no longer wanted, as he had been crying, and keeping them awake!

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