When did you last see a Palm Civet on campus? I have been asking myself this question for a few weeks now and after going through my old field notebooks, I find that it is almost a decade since I last saw one here.
Before proceeding further, I would like to introduce the Asian Palm Civet. This a mammal, bigger and heavier than a domestic cat but with longer tail, mostly grey, black and white in colour with a shaggy, coarse fur all over the body. It is distributed across South and SE Asia. It is mainly a frugivorous animal and plays a vital role as a seed disperser in wooded areas. It is also adapted to live in urban areas and is mostly nocturnal.
When I first moved in to my residence in Rishi Valley its chattering sounds were among the nocturnal sounds frequently heard. I used to see it while sitting on our terrace gazing at night skies – a dark ghostly shadow moving silently along the branches Tamarind tree to the Gulmohur and then on to the Peltophorum tree. I have seen a baby civet getting “rescued” by its mother after a lot of drama in the Malli House middle garden in broad daylight and seen a family of civets – mother and young exploring the other end of the Malli House Terrace.
On yet another occasion, we intervened to chase away dogs and crows that were harassing a young one and on one of the last occasions I saw it, our neighbour rescued a baby civet, badly injured after a domestic cat had mauled it. It survived just one day and died the next day.
The Junior School assembly hall used to have a bamboo false roof and we have seen unlucky students getting a few drops of civet urine on their heads during morning assemblies! There are stories of how in the past, students especially at the Boys’ hostel, would drop their glasses of milk at night and flee into their rooms when they notice this strange mammal approaching them!
While we rejoice and celebrate the arrival of a new species (bird or other organisms), we hardly notice their disappearance from our midst. I remember hearing the howls of Golden Jacakls in our campus at dusk and had even come across them in the late 1990’s. They too disappeared silently two decades ago. More recently the Wild Pigs vanished from under our nose all of a sudden. We have quite a few other mammals (mostly nocturnal) and other wild fauna that faces the risks of local extinction. We need to create greater awareness about them amongst ourselves and take necessary actions to avert this.
Not many schools or educational institutions are lucky as ourselves to have a large campus, well endowed with biodiversity. Do we really make use of this rare opportunity and spend time out in nature as we ought to by observing, documenting and monitoring them or are we using this as a mere prop to continue to live out our urban lifestyles blissfully unaware of (and indifferent to) all the nature around us?
- V. Santharam