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A day with the animals

By ⋅ January 11, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

On New Year’s Day, along with Usha for com­pany, I headed out to WRRC (WildLife Res­cue and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter) on Banerghatta Road. I had been mean­ing to visit the cen­tre for a while and decided that the 1st would be a good day to start.

First of course, I had to say hello to the rather hand­some Saba at Usha’s place.

Saba

Most of our adven­ture was con­fined in nav­i­gat­ing the awful 15 kms stretch to the Cen­tre (iron­i­cally a.k.a. Banerghatta Road). This was my first expo­sure to the road and I must say I was shocked. I thought some of the city roads were bad. Now, I know why peo­ple com­plain so much about this par­tic­u­lar stretch!

Any­way, since this post is not about roads let me come back to my topic at hand.

The Cen­tre is sit­u­ated a few kilo­me­ters from the Banerghatta Park. It is not easy to find and there are 2 approaches. We first tried one approach, which we had to aban­don since there was too much water and I couldn’t quite put my Zen through the muck (it had already taken a bit of a bump). Finally, we took a detour of another 3 or 4 kilo­me­tres and finally reached WRRC.

The first guy to greet us was the hand­some Ten­sion who came and jumped on the win­dow of the car and looked inside expec­tantly. A rather excited and friendly soul he turned out to be.

Tension

The Cen­tre is run by CUPA and there are quite a few vol­un­teers who also work here includ­ing Abhisheka who trav­els all the way from Majes­tic to work with injured ani­mals. And how do you get from the main road to the cen­tre, we ask her curi­ously. (It’s about a 5 km stretch). Oh, I walk, she says rather mat­ter of factly. What dedication!

We also met Saleem Hamid*, who spends much of his time here help­ing injured birds, dis­eased ani­mals and dis­placed rep­tiles. We watched Saleem in the mon­key cage with some amount of awe. He han­dled the mon­keys (all in stages of recov­ery) like babies. They climbed on top of him, pulled his hair, played with his keys, while he patiently went about clean­ing their cages and feed­ing them.

Baby Monkeys

Then he took us to the barn owls enclo­sure where about 8 of them are recov­er­ing after being res­cued from the ceil­ing of a build­ing. The owls are recu­per­at­ing and will be here till they are ready to be released again. We man­aged to spot one, who gave us one long stare and then went back to his upright sleep posi­tion. The rest were all inside their spe­cial card­board houses doing what they do best in the day : sleeping!

There were a great many kites cir­cling the sky above and one of the folks there informed us that they were mostly ones who had also been res­i­dents of the cen­tre at some point of time. They keep com­ing back now for food and some tlc!

A cou­ple of baby kites were also recu­per­at­ing in another cage after hav­ing fallen off their nests. I spot­ted one of the build­ing roof and inched closer (dif­fi­cult since they tend to fly off at any indi­ca­tion of move­ment). He sat there while and looked out for food.

Kite

One lone para­keet in a cage was show­ing off by bal­anc­ing him­self off the ceil­ing. Appar­ently, the para­keet has been suf­fer­ing from men­tal stress after being badly treated by the pre­vi­ous owners.

Saleem and a cou­ple of other vets attend to a large python which has stopped eat­ing for a few days. It has been brought from the park to the cen­tre. Usha shud­ders as she sees the size of the python. I think it’s a rather good look­ing spec­i­men, but only from very far away and through the window.

Saleem and all the folks there do some really great work and help is always wel­come, espe­cially since every­thing hap­pens through vol­un­teers and con­tri­bu­tions. Right now, the owls them­selves cost about 600 per day to be fed and raised.

If you’re inter­ested in con­tribut­ing mon­e­tar­ily, you can get in touch with Saleem/Abhisheka or Smita. I have their num­bers so drop in an email to anitabora5 at red­iff­mail dot com. Any help is most welcome.

*Saleem Hamid, an indus­trial pho­tog­ra­pher in Ban­ga­lore, is pas­sion­ate about sav­ing wildlife and giv­ing sick and injured ani­mals a sec­ond chance to live. He is a self-taught vet­eri­nar­ian prac­ti­tioner and takes metic­u­lous care of each ani­mal that he han­dles. Despite his hec­tic sched­ule, he has set up a wildlife reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre which he runs him­self. He has spe­cial­ized in work­ing with con­fis­cated rep­tiles and the man­age­ment of trau­ma­tised and immuno-suppressed rep­tiles. In spite of being bit­ten twice by cobras, he con­tin­ues in his wildlife reha­bil­i­ta­tion efforts. His com­mend­able work has made him a front run­ner in wildlife man­age­ment and care in Bangalore.

Info cour­tesy: http://www.vmaaf.org/pages/awards_2002.htm

On the way back, On the way back, Usha spot­ted these beau­ti­ful pair of brah­miny kites. They were perched on top of a tree rather high up, and this is the clos­est I could get.

Brahminy

Les Ani­maux photoset

Discussion

19 Responses to “A day with the animals”

  1. this is sooo cool Anita…i also love animals…DOGS esp..n con­tribute a lil bit to KRUPA in bangalore…thanks for pro­vid­ing info about WRRC.….…n hey SABA is adorable.…

    Posted by Mehak | January 12, 2006, 6:51 pm

  2. Tak­ing care of ani­mals is a very admirable thing. Kudos to all of you involved.

    Posted by Nithya | January 12, 2006, 10:12 pm

  3. a cou­ple of days back there were around 50 kites cir­cling the space near my office in millers road. At that pre­cise moment a white necked bird (larger than a nor­mal kite) came and started cir­cling. I thought it was an eagle and rushed back into office to fetch my cam­era. Alas it was gone before I could click one. I was won­der­ing “are there really eagles around here ?”. But now I know what they are. Brah­miny kites.

    Thanks a ton. It was the exact same thing as por­trayed in the last snap. Maybe I will catch one of them on roll soon.

    vasu

    Posted by vasu | January 13, 2006, 1:31 pm

  4. Hi Anita,
    It all hap­pened through Orkut that i first came to know bout u’re blog and from then onwards m a reg­u­lar reader :-) Being a nature and ani­mal lover, i liked this arti­cle very much. The pic­tures that u add to this blog really makes it very inter­est­ing. Keep up the good work!!

    PS:
    Very soon m com­ing up with my per­sonal blog and dear… u’re the inspiration!!

    Posted by Divesh Kamboj | January 13, 2006, 6:45 pm

  5. You do love your animals!

    Been think­ing of start­ing a group blog on NE…

    Posted by anthony | January 13, 2006, 8:31 pm

  6. The pic­tures are great,as usual.
    I still can’t get over the way saleem was clean­ing the mon­key cages not has­sled one bit with 3 mon­keys jump­ing all over him — one pulling off the rub­ber band from his hair and another snatch­ing away a bunch of keys. And the expert way in which he coaxed that angry mon­key back into the cage with­out los­ing his patience. It is a lot of tough work and gen­uine love for ani­mals.
    Ya, i see that python pretty often in my dreams these days ( shudder…shudder…)
    and thanks for such beau­ti­ful pic­tures of my son!

    Posted by usha | January 15, 2006, 11:56 am

  7. Hi Anita.. Yes­ter­day, along with my friend Rohit, i went to Ban­nerghatta National Park. After the mag­nif­i­cent grand safari, i thought i’d check out WRRC and find out how we can help them as a vol­un­teer in their noble efforts. To my sur­prise, i found the same water log­ging on the way where one of the CUPA car was stuck. We turned our bike and took another route (we were already pre­pared for the same after read­ing u’re post). Again, the first one to greet us was adorable Ten­sion :-) fol­lowed by his part­ner with a bro­ken but heal­ing leg.
    I was really touched by the ded­i­ca­tion and love of these peo­ple for sick and needy ani­mals. A lady who was work­ing there showed us around. I wanted to know how we can help by being vol­un­teer but since Saleem was busy prepar­ing for release of two mon­keys, he told us to meet on Sat­ur­day noon and gave his mobile num­ber. Look­ing for­ward to help them in their noble cause.

    Posted by Divesh Kamboj | January 16, 2006, 4:02 pm

  8. hello there…u have a won­der­ful blog.…I loved this post the most.

    Posted by Bhavana | January 16, 2006, 5:28 pm

  9. Hey great post! Next time please call me.

    Posted by Suman | January 17, 2006, 1:34 pm

  10. Wow! Amaz­ing trip! I wish to do the same coz me too love the animals.

    Posted by christ | January 18, 2006, 4:24 pm

  11. Lovely pics!!
    I think you really love animals,i love them to.……
    Won­der­ful post.
    :)

    Posted by Neetika | January 20, 2006, 11:48 am

  12. heyy..
    nice stuff.. i mean the all of em..
    Just A Lit­tle Some­thing
    Indian Blog­gers List
    Anita’s Port­fo­lio
    The world through my viewfinder
    Tsunami Help India
    do chk out mine whn free.. am a small time char­coal artist.. more in here..
    http://roadhouseblues99.blogspot.com/

    Posted by Rupesh | January 23, 2006, 8:02 am

  13. Hi Anita,
    Just came across your site and liked the pho­tos and the travel.…this came at a time when I was crib­bing that being a girl, I could not go any­where alone etc…
    So it was a ray of hope…

    Thx

    Posted by Akila | January 24, 2006, 2:13 pm

  14. Sorry,

    You can check out my blogsite at http://pinktints.blogspot.com — there is a rea­son why I began this site which is men­tioned at the end…

    Akila

    Posted by Akila | January 24, 2006, 2:14 pm

  15. mehak: that’s really nice! saba is adorable :)

    nithya: indeed a great job they do everyday.

    vasu: next time :) tell me if you man­age to get them!

    divesh: it was really nice to know that you made the jour­ney all the way there and vis­ited the cen­tre. i just wish it was some­place closer :) and the roads weren’t so bad. but see­ing the ded­i­ca­tion of folks who work there, i shouldn’t crib. did you man­age to visit the place and talk to saleem?

    thanks bha­vana.

    suman: call you do to what? you’re prob­a­bly be busy at brigade fuel ;)

    neethika, jay: thanks!

    thanks rupesh! will def­i­nitely check it out :)

    akila: it’s def­i­nitely pos­si­ble. you just need to be a slightly care­ful, but there’s lit­tle one can’t do!

    Posted by Anita | February 1, 2006, 4:28 pm

  17. Hu ewlikf!

    Posted by tramadol | March 3, 2007, 3:32 pm

  18. Really a nice post by Anita.
    I was search­ing for some Reha­bil­i­taion cen­ter since I got a cou­ple of read eard slid­ers.
    I want to find out if there is any law in india agaist deal­ing in slid­ers (or any turtles/tortoise) less than 4 in.
    I’m now wiat­ing for my next week­end and see if I can visit WRRC to find out what can be done with those two lil slid­ers, I’ll be more than happy if we can send them back to their coun­try or can release in India some­where where they find their com­mu­nity (slim chances). if any­one has got any info on this, you can write me in ketandp at msn dot com.
    Thank you

    Posted by Ketan | March 4, 2007, 7:44 pm

  19. I love Ani­mals Spe­cially these!

    P.S. I am not sure if I spelled spe­cially right!

    Posted by audrey | March 19, 2007, 5:15 am

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