ALTER IDEM

This is the profile picture of the neighbourhood stray. Actually, from the amount of time he spends in our yard, you could call him ours! To date, he has not asked for/ stolen from our kitchen and I have never offered him food/drink. But, I have given him a name..... the most unimaginative 'TOM'. As usual, one morning last week, I heard some neighbours yelling 'shoos' and kids hollering out exaggerated 'miaows'.......and, I knew.... Tom would now come to his safest haven - our yard! On a sudden whim, I decided to  keep track of the time he spent here.....  I first found Tom at around 9.30 a.m- comfortably settled under the Allamanda shrubs. Some time later, he was eating  what I call 'Animal-grass'...... You know, dogs and cats eat this particular grass when they have indigestion..... self-medication! Since I have caught Tom eating Animal-grass quite often, I'm inclined to believe that he gets a tummy-ache regularly! A...

 Conducting a research on lizards?          Short on them??  Feel free to drop into my office-cum-study. At any point of time, you'll find at least one on the  wall.  Right now, a little one is playing 'catch-me-if-you-can' with an adult! Actually, the word 'lizard' sounds so unemotional and scientific. I prefer the Hindi chipkali ... it sounds slimy and creepy - and, suits the creature better!  Not that I haven't tried to chase the chipkali s away....I have tried every kind of repellant - from the commercially available stuff to placing peacock feathers at vantage points... and failed. Now, my teenager tells me that her friend has a surefire solution - to write Kaanchi Maharaja all over the walls - mind you, it should be written in Kannada with chalk! After having a good laugh (alone) at this one, I began to wonder.................................................. Maybe, lizards find it hard to mov...

During my school days, for a brief period, we had a dog and a cat - a pup & a kitten, actually! Bumpy, the dog, treated the whole world like his long-lost buddy. That's why, he was given away to the very first person who asked if she could have him! Chinky, the cat, had to be put to sleep thanks to some incurable illness. After that, we had neither the time nor the inclination for pets..... A couple of months ago, I had been toying with the idea of adopting a pet to keep me company -- not any more.  It is so important to make a unanimous decision about the choice of the animal because all of us have to live peacefully in the same house!! And, our problem was precisely that! The choice of the animal!! Dogs---NO! With dogs, we (my husband & the rest of us) have exactly opposite attitudes. My husband thinks that dogs should NEVER be allowed inside the house and should be tied up most of the time, preferably in some far-out corner. The rest of us feel that a...

Desolate, hungry and lonely - those were my first thoughts when I saw this stray outside the gate last week.  Clearly, it was crying to be adopted and something about its appearance touched a chord in me. I decided to make friends...first step towards adoption, actually! Every time I tried to go near it, it would run away, and return very hesitatingly after some time! So, I placed some breakfast leftovers and some water near the gate - 'The way to a hungry dog's heart is via its stomach' principle!  Later that evening when I broke the news.....  Husband: THAT thing?! It doesn't even look like a dog!  Kid: You should call it 'Bunny'..it has such long ears!  I settled on 'Bunkey' after a character from Enid Blyton's 'Noddy' stories...and looked forward to seeing it in the morning.  Alas! Bunkey didn't return at all!  Of course, it wasn't the food!! Just that somebody else beat me at adopting it!  Yet again!  Twice...

'Go away now..come back when you are a butterfly' .... in his books, Ruskin Bond throws out caterpillars from his room with these words. My exact sentiments!! It is so magical that an itchy, creepy, crawly thing like a caterpillar becomes a beautiful butterfly after a few days inside a cocoon. That's what's called 'beauty sleep', I guess :) Born and brought up in Bangalore, I was quite indifferent to nature. Now, living in the most beautiful Malnad part of Chikmagalur, I'm surrounded by nature on all sides... I only have to look out of an open window to see these fascinating creatures flitting and fluttering by - seemingly careless, while performing the duties assigned to them by nature. Butterflies love the lantana flowers and sunshine. Infact, lantana makes up for 50-60% of the plants in a butterfly park. Once the rains arrive, the butterflies disappear - to goodness knows where! Old timers here, in the Malnad, missed the butterflies so ...