Guardians of the food chain

As said before, we were not this bad always. When exactly we graduated from ‘animal lovers’ to… is difficult to pinpoint. When I got married I was a dog lover (PLEASE note just dogs) and my husband a nature lover – all into plants and birds, the sky, etc. Unfortunately my dogs won the day. They dug up his plants with such gusto that he had no option but to give in and switch camps. (At times, I wonder wistfully, what would have happened if he had a more dominating personality? Perhaps we would have had a beautiful rose garden instead of our circus.) My daughters took after both of us and carried this love to a different level altogether. Often I feel trapped in a web that was started off by me to a great extent.

I remember R weeping quietly because we were just feeding a dog which had scabies and not doing anything to cure it. It ended with the dog being given neem bath regularly (at that time we had not blossomed into home-grown vets) till it became better. Cannot say whether the bath helped or not R definitely felt better. She was just five years old.

D, just four, took Bingo to the terrace. We were all getting ready for school. In the midst of the mad rush, you can only understand if you are a mother of four youngsters getting ready and getting others ready, I heard a faint ‘hut…hut’. Rushing up to investigate I find D valiantly trying to shoo away a monkey twice her size, with her arms protectively around Bingo who did not find it necessary to raise an alarm!

We have driven for kilometres looking for a water body to release a small little fish that had fallen off from a truck during transport. The plight of the fish being noticed by B who immediately had the car stopped to pick it up in the cap of a water bottle. Years have gone by but not much has changed. Animals in distress are spotted on way to office, and on one occasion on way to interview etc. etc. and dumped on R’s lap for the care required.

If you have been keeping a track of the number of children, you must be thinking, surely the last (not the youngest. B>N>R>D) is normal. Well no. We are as a family are partially vegetarian as N gave up chicken and mutton as she could not bear the thought of animals being slaughtered. She works in a bank where kittens which need rescuing thrive. She has an immense fascination for cows. When she wants to bring home a kitten, I give in, at least it’s not a cow.

The family, I am not the core group, rescues cats from dogs, birds from cats, lizards from birds and cats, and moths from lizards all done with great determination. We don’t bat an eyelid if the light comes crashing down because a pillow has been aimed at a lizard after a moth. In nutshell we are the self-appointed guardians of food chains.