A snack in Amlekhganj

The remains of the narrow gauge railway
north of Birgunj, Nepal.

"Nepal was not only unwelcoming, it was virtually inaccessible . . . The most common entry route, apart from that taken by the Sherpas . . . was at the Indian border railhead at Raxaul. From there, rail passengers transferred to the narrow gauge Nepal State Railway. This little toylike train took four hours to cover the twenty-five or so miles across the southern Nepalese plain to Amlekanj, where passengers transferred to car or bus . . ." Fallen Giants, a history of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes.

  

"What do you want for your birthday, dad?" 

"Chas Clifton mentioned a good book  the other day",  I responded, and so I acquired my copy of Isserman and Weaver's fat volume, Fallen Giants.  

It gathered dust on the nightstand for several months, but in need of reading material for a flight over Thanksgiving, I stuffed it into my carry-on and was soon swept away from the here and now.  

Fallen Giants is a great chronicle of human endeavor seasoned with political agendas, the clash of cultures, and the madness that motivates some mountaineers.  

And since I had visited Nepal many times in the 70s and 80s, the Nepalese place names rang a few bells.

One of them was dusty little Amlekhganj at the foot of the fossil-rich Sivalik Range (or Churias).

We stopped there on December 18, 1982 during a long return trip from West Bengal, India.

Butt sore, famished, and seriously needing a break, we took a stiff-legged stroll looking for food.

The "little toylike train" was already gone; villagers had long since appropriated the sleepers for fire wood, and the rails were sinking into the ground.

But the railway station, absent the hustle and bustle was still there.

I think a Brahmin businessman had taken possession and was storing bags of rice in a locked room.

The abandoned railway station in Amlekhganj, December 18, 1982

Our noses led us across the road through the huts and lean-tos to the inviting pall of wood smoke wafting from Laxman Ghale's food stall. 

The huts and lean-tos

Straight-backed and cross-legged, the young man resembled a lean Lord Buddha, but I was disabused of this notion when he smartly rapped the noggin of one of his boy helpers. 

The boys fetched us little stools, and the cook resumed kneading something in a chipped enamel bowl.  

And what were those bile-colored chunks he so lovingly massaged?

"Khasi", smiled Hemanta, "castrated goat." ( He honored the two vowels and pronounced it "gowut".)  

"Very tasty", he added. "We'll have a snack of khasi shekwa, my friend -- what you Americans call barbecue."

Laxman Ghale in his stall preparing hhasi shehwa.

Laxman earned 150 Rupees a day, paid and fed the two boy helpers, and supported his parents who lived in a shack behind his stand.

And he was a Ghale, a tribal group I'd never heard of, which appealed to my inner anthropologist.

"How about these boys?" I asked my friend, "are they Ghales too?"

More banter followed, and my friend laughed lustily in a Nepali version of the wicked Francophone.

To this the feisty lad who was fanning the coals frowned ominously and fanned ashes toward my friend.

"The little bugger's name is Sambhu Thapa, but he doesn't look Chhetri to me. I told him his mother tricked his father."

Ah yes, I'd heard that one before.

In Hemanta's encyclopedia of amusing Nepaliana were some gems, and questioning a son's paternity -- "Look you little bastard, only I know who your real father is." -- was the maternal response to the last straw of mother-son conflict.

The feisty Sambhu was not amused, though we had little doubt that his mother had numerous occasions to cast doubt on his paternity before.

Hemanta was still waxing eloquent on the virtues of Nepali child-rearing methods when the goat kabobs were served and we were treated to a visit by the local pie dogs.

Two were scruffy skulking runts, the other a robust impeccably groomed black and white dog with an air of confidence.

The handsome dog had been an incurable fighter, explained Laxman Ghale, until the town's folk grew tired of it all. The price had been castration.

A shame, I thought. Such a fine specimen of canine machismo.

I wondered if he had had a chance to sow his wild oats.

Hemanta translated.

"How could he", laughed Laxman Ghale, 'he's castrated!"

The joke was on me.

And how do they castrate a dog in a Nepali village? I asked.

Hemanta didn't have to ask our cook.

"They brick them", was Hemanta's quick reply, and once again my crafty host was obliged to explain the obvious.

"Some villagers hold the dogs legs apart, and . . . " his motions told the rest.

And that, my friends, is what I recorded in my notes about a memorable snack in Amlekhganj.  

Camera Trap Pioneers: Charles McDougal

[Chuck McDougal during a tiger drive in the 1980s. 

Photo by Chris Wemmer.]

Charles "Chuck" McDougal began photographing tigers with camera traps in the late 1970s. Not since F.W. Champion's camera trapping achievements 40 years earlier had anyone pursued this kind of photography with such devotion.

McDougal was trained as a cultural anthropologist at the University of Colorado and developed a keen interest in tigers and Nepalese natural history during Ph. D. research on the Rai people of eastern Nepal.

With fluency in Nepali and Rai, he was well prepared for work in the terai after graduate school.

That led to several years of hunting problem tigers in the late 1960s. With the passage of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) in 1972 the era of sport hunting tigers came to an end.

McDougal devoted himself to scientific studies of tigers when he became the Director of Research at Tiger Tops in the 1970s. At the time, Tiger Tops had the distinction of being the only lodge in a national park where tourists could bank on seeing tigers in the course of a few days.

In my own experience at the time, tiger viewing at Tiger Tops usually interrupted happy hour or dinner.

When the bell rang, tipsy tourists gleefully scuttled into waiting Land Rovers. A tiger or leopard had just killed or returned to the bait -- a buffalo calf.

Ten minutes later they were deposited on a sandy trail in the jungle, where the guide requested you to remove your shoes and remain silent. (I believe the banishment of clodhoppers was a brilliant marketing ploy.)

Then they padded up a sandy jungle path, and five minutes later were viewing the tiger feeding in the light of a torch 100 feet away.

[Photo by Chuck McDougal]

Chuck had been studying tigers in the vicinity of the Lodge when the Smithsonian Nepal Tiger Ecology Project commenced in 1973, and in due course he became a key collaborator with the young American and Nepali scientists who studied tigers and their prey in the park.

McDougal's initial investigations were based on jungle lore -- tracking animals by their pugmarks as popularized by the legendary colonial naturalist Jim Corbett.

Most footprints of young animals are not sufficiently distinct for irrefutable identification of individual tigers. His studies required the ability to individually identify the members of the tiger population. Camera traps were the logical solution.

Tigers left their pugmarks on trails, jeep tracks, and riverbanks throughout the park. Getting pictures was only a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Sooner or later a tiger would amble down the path again.

Chuck's earliest camera trap was a Nikon F2. The model had an accessory electronic shutter release, and this he wired to a switch in a home-made pressure plate. It was built from two wooden planks from the local sal tree (Shorea robusta), and compression springs held the electrical contact apart.

He buried the pressure pad in a shallow depression on a game trail. When an animal stepped on the wooden pad the battery-powered circuit was closed, triggering the camera and its flash.

Here's the story in Chuck's words.

"In early 1972, I started working at Tiger Tops. In 1977, inspired by Champion's tiger photos from the 1920s Mike Price, a Anglia Survial cameraman and still phographer started using a Nikon F2 linked up to a homemade pressure pad. I continued this after he left a few months later and photographed about 20 different tigers in the course of a few years.

"I started using Trailmasters in 1995. The first one I had I put out on the ridge behind Tiger Tops, and I left it there for 3 days. When I went to collect it I found that the tripod had been knocked over and the camera was missing. A young but large male tiger had attacked and carried the camera in his jaws about 80 meters down the path before dropping it. The slide had been knocked off and the camera had canine dents in it. But the photo of the tiger, giving the camera a dirty look before attacking it, came out fine. I sent it to Bill Goodson who put it on his website and gave me a new camera. I still have 2 guys on my payroll camera trapping with the Trailmasters."

Chuck steadfastly improved the system to capture truly outstanding images. He eliminated, for example, the flat appearance rendered by head-on lighting of the electronic flash by placing a slave-activated flash at a 45-degree angle to the trail.

I recall my befuddlement in 1981 when he completed the preparation of a camera set on a trail near the Lodge. He dressed the camera in two quilted mufflers, which made it look like a black effigy on a tripod. The mufflers were beautifully made by the local tailor and stuffed with the unseeded fiber of the local simal or silk cotton tree. (And like all locally made pillows, the muffler was highly attractive to rats hungry for oily seeds.)

Why make the camera look like a black scarecrow?

Well, it solved a vexing problem. In the 'pre-muffler period' Chuck noticed that tigers were often photographed in unflattering moments. They were either frozen in motion veering away from the camera, or they had that unmistakable look of the 'possum-in-the-headlights'.

These responses were testimony to the tiger's lightning reflexes. The big cats actually reacted within microseconds to the sound of the camera's shutter.

As for the pillow-headed scarecrow on the side of the trail, the big cats didn’t seem to notice.

Chuck and his team of two Nepalese camera trappers tallied 8,683 trap-nights of effort and identified 119 individual tigers. They captured a total of 1,309 tiger photos. Most photos were of resident males and females, but each year new tigers appeared, some for a fleeting period and never to seen again, others to challenge and defeat incumbent territory holders.

Over the years he also accumulated an impressive inventory of other wildlife, including yellow-throated martens, several species of civets, and striped hyenas. The rarest find perhaps was a ratel or honey badger. Nowadays it’s an extremely rare species in the subcontinent.

Dave Smith and Chuck McDougal will soon have their book published on the ecology of Nepal's tigers, and I am sure some of Chuck's photos will adorn the pages.

The Soul of the Rhino -- A book review

Many biologists feel that some chapter of their life is worthy of a book, and a few actually take the trouble to write about it.

The Soul of the Rhino is such a book. Hemanta Mishra is a Nepali conservationist, and that's what makes this book special. It's a conservation story from the perspective of a developing country national, albeit western educated. Most books of this genre are written by westerners, who rarely treat us to the kind of cultural perspective found here.

This book is about Mishra's rhinoceros years. If you enjoy reading memoirs that intersect travel, wildlife conservation and cross-cultural phenomena, The Soul of the Rhino is worth your time. If you really dig Nepal and its people, all the more reason to get a copy.

Early on Mishra gives us cultural orientation with a glimpse of his childhood. Since Hemanta's birth was preceded by those of 5 brothers, all of whom died within months of birth, you really can't blame his mother for having her son's nose pierced so he would look like a baby girl. It was her way of fooling the fateful Goddess Yama, and it worked.

Next, Mishra's youth plays out against the medieval backdrop of Kathmandu's shuttered houses, narrow streets and temples. When the Kingdom's doors are thrown open to western tourism and foreign aid in the 1960s, the bored graduate joins a clandestine British film crew that captures forbidden footage of Tibetan Khampas beleaguered by the Red Army. When he returns family and friends save his butt from jail.

Next we pan to the terai, where Mishea learns about rhinos from an unlikely guru, an irreverant Tharu elephant driver named Tapsi. Though a Nepali Prime Minister bashed Tapsi's teeth out with the butt of a rifle during a royal hunt, the punishment failed to staunch his foul-mouthed candor and jungle wisdom that pointed the young Mishra in the direction of rhino conservation. (The surly Tapsi is long gone, but in Chitwan's tea shops you can still hear his name.)

Mishra's early career was in Nepal's national parks, and park work in the developing world is a topic unto itself. He weaves the park thread through the book as a series of linked anecdotes. I appreciated "The Clash of Cultures" in which the late Graeme Caughley, a brilliant population ecologist finally became exasperated with "Nepali time". (All Asia hands know what Anthony Burgess meant when he wrote that "time stands still in the East".)

Then the cultural table is turned. The King sends Mishra off for graduate education in the United Kingdom, and he is forced to deal with the distractions of European "dress code", problematic for a young Hindu used to seeing no more than a woman's ankle. There are also the problems of linguistic nuance. He wants to belly laugh when the emissary from the British Council introduces herself as Mrs Hoare.

Then back to Nepal where he tells us about the status of the world's rhinos, poachers and middlemen, royal hunts, and the capture and taming of greater one-horned Asian rhinos. All of this leads to the realization of Tapsi's sentimental wish -- that Nepal's rhinos recolonize with western terai. Before that can happen, though, Mishra is ordered to participate in the ultimate conflict of interests, to participate in the King's once-in-a-lifetime ritual killing of a rhinoceros followed by puja (worship) in its eviscerated body cavity. To my knowledge this may be the only English language account of the famous Tarpan ceremony. Then follows the capture and translocation of Chitwan's rhinos to Bardia Wildlife Sanctuary.

I've known the author for over 30 years, and can say that he is never one to pull punches, gild the lily, or suffer fools. His scatological references are the real thing. That's how he talks. But his court behavior in the presence of the royal family, which is something else altogether, certainly clued me in on the intricacies of caste and Nepalese tradition.

Many of Mishra's friends and colleagues have their parts in the story, including the late King Birendra and prince (now King) Gyanendra, Sir Edmund Hillary and Margaux Hemingway, Esmond Bradley Martin, the seldom seen expert of wildlife trafficking, philanthropist Ed Bass, John Coapman the fun-loving Texan and founder of the famous Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge, and intrepid biologists like Eric Dinerstein and 'Minnesota Dave Smith' (whose names you have also encountered elsewhere in this blog). For me, reading the book was like a visit with old friends.

The Soul of the Rhino is amusing and tragic, and makes it clear that conservation is as much about managing people as wildlife. Progress is by fits and starts, but setbacks are part of the game. The rhino's future in Nepal is far from certain, but there is hope as long as there are people like Hemanta Mishra.

Click here for an interview with Hemanta Mishra, and here to order your copy.

[Below, pit-training a recently captured male rhino calf; a couple pages from the codger's Nepal fieldnotes back in the 80s]

So long, Sir Edmund

Mountain climbers and explorers are different from most of us, and some are driven by strange demons. Sir Edmund Hillary however stood apart. The humanitarian climber died yesterday in New Zealand.

In 1953 he and Tsering Norgay were the first mountaineers to reach the summit of Mt Everest. Hillary was 33 years old.

He was an extraordinary kind of explorer -- a diplomat who gave back to the hill people he loved.

Listen to a few words and view some footage about the great man here.

Wikipedia reviews his life and times.


Getty Conservation Prize winner Hemanta Mishra, my colleague from Nepal days, wrote last night:

"I am deeply shocked. Yes - but of course I knew him very well. Sir Ed and I worked together in creating the Sagarmatha National Park. I have fond memories of him up in the Everest area. He was instrumental in getting many of Nepal's National Park staff trained in New Zealand e.g. the Late Mingma Sherpa, Ram Prit Yadav, Lakpa Sherpa, Nima Wangchu and many others.

I met him now and then over the years. He visited our home in Kupondole and one of my most cherished photographs is of him and his wife with Alita, Pragya, and Binayak (inside Sushma's belly).

His famous saying "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" -- were words that motived me to translocate the rhinos from Chitwan to Bardia.

Though born in New Zealand - he was a Nepalese in heart and mind, and he did so much for Nepal. We will miss him very much."

In praise of the tump line

[a villager uses a tump line to lift a load of elephant grass in Chitwan National Park, Nepal]

There is something to be said for simple inventions that work well. Like the tump line.

For me the tump line was a curiousity of remote outposts until 1985 during a trek in the midland hills of Nepal. That was when Mrs Galloway broke a metatarsal bone, and Mrs Joslyn's knees went on strike.

"We will carry them", announced Sherap Jangbo, our Sherpa leader. He wasn't kidding. He consulted with the porters, and the youngest among them stepped forward to "do the needful".

At first the lad tried to fashion a tump line from a used lungi that resembled an oversize dishrag, but then Jangbo handed him a cinch belt from a horse. This ancient piece of leather had snapped the day before, and as a result a retired school teacher from Virginia learned that she had a talent for tumbling. Equally amazing were the repairs to the belt which was about to be used as a tump line.



With mime and broken English our Sherpa informed the ladies how to sit in the sling. We watched dubiously as Mrs Joslyn assumed the take off position and wonderboy squatted. Then the moment of suspense. . . wonderboy slowly straightened his legs. Someone whispered "hernia" and then the tumpline's mechanical advantage became evident. Mrs Joslyn piggybacked up the trail on two adolescent legs in slow motion. For the rest of the trek the two ladies took turns riding the remaining horse with a saddle and wonderboy, who became a celebrity among his fellow porters.



This was the first and last tour I ever guided, but I was much taken with the tump line, and I commend it to any game readers who have hauled logs in a one-handed firewood carrier, and now suffer from one elongated arm, a lateral sigmoid deflection of the spine, a wrenched neck, or other orthopedic quirks.

Our ancestors invented several ways of hauling heavy loads, and probably long before beasts of burden were harnessed to the travois or fitted with panniers. You can balance the load on your head, suspend the load from your head using a head band and tump line, or hang the load from your shoulders using a back pack. You can also suspend two loads from a spring pole on the shoulder or on a yoke. Each method has its own mechanical stresses and energetic costs.

Recently a team of Belgian physiologists shed light on the energetics of hauling loads with tump line. Their subjects were Sherpa, Rai, and Tamang porters who trek weekly from Kathmandu to Namche, a distance of about 100 km. To reach Namche at an elevation of 3500 m requires 8000 m of ascent and 6300 m of descent. The porters are men and women aged 11 to 68 years, and they do it all in 7-9 days, barefoot.

Now get this. Men haul an average load that is 93% of their body weight, and women carry 66% of theirs'. My hat is off to the porter whose load was 183% of his body weight.

The eight porters who were the subjects of the energetics study were most accommodating. Not only did they agree to wear the 3 lb face mask and analyzer that measures oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production, but they packed various loads up to their own body weight at different speeds (0.5 to 1.5 m/sec) on a 51 m flat track. A drillmaster kept them in step at the various assigned velocities.

For the sake of comparison the investigators used control data from previous studies in which Europeans backpacked, and African women head-balanced similar loads at different walking speeds.

The results showed that Nepalese porters were "far more economical energetically than the controls at all loads and more economical than African women at all except the lightest loads." Loads that were lighter than 20% of the porter's body weight had a negligible energetic cost, and were carried "for free", while loads that exceeded 20% gave Nepalese porters an energetic advantage that increases with increasingly larger loads. Consequently, they can carry loads with tump lines that are 30% heavier than the maximum loads African women carry on the heads. Both methods by the way are energetically superior to backpacks.

Two years ago I started to haul firewood with a tump line and canvas sling, and found it far more comfortable than schlepping a log carrier with one or both arms. My Sherpa hauling kit consists of a canvas head band (a homemade swing seat with grommets), and quarter inch cords hooked to a log carrier.

I can haul 60 lb loads, a third of my weight, like a very tired Sherpa porter. I feel more stable with a low hanging load, and find that gripping the head band eases the backward force of the load. When my head feels like it is twisting off, it is quite easy to jerk the load and adjust the headband.

The biggest challenge is lifting the load. Old codgers with bird legs just can't lift 60 pounds from a squat. You need a helper or you should load the wood on an elevated position. The amazing thing is that it isn't a big deal hauling such a load up a hill. You can only walk slowly, but amazingly you soon find your slow-motion stride and don't run out of breath.

I guess I'm a bit of a wuss, since I don't intend to try it barefoot.




References

Bastiene, G.J., B. Schepens, P.A. Willems, N.C. Heglund. 2005. Energetics of load carrying in Nepalese porters. Science, 308:1755.

Heglund, N.C., P. A. Willems, M. Penta and G. A. Cavagna. 1995. Energy saving gait mechanics with head-supported loads. Nature 375, 52 - 54.

Maloiy, G. M. O., N. C. Heglund, L. M. Prager, G. A. Cavagna and C. R. Taylor. 1986. Energetic cost of carrying loads: have African women discovered an economic way? Nature 319, 668 - 669.

Stalwart pariah dogs -- Part 2

Bishnu Bahadur Lama in 1984

Sauraha, Chitawan National Park, Nepal. March 5, 1984


"Load the capchur gun with ketamine," stammered Hemanta. "We're going to get that bloody yellow dog in the hatisar for leopard bait."

"Hazoor!", replied Bishnu with a wag of his topi-capped head, then hurried off to his task.

It wasn't a death sentence. The dog would be caged within a large box trap. Its captivity would give us a break.

Yellow pie was the leader of the pack, and we were tired of his game. Whenever we walked through the hatisar (the government's elephant camp), he and his pack of snarling curs dashed in and barked with raised hackles and puckered bungholes. They would back off if we reached for a stone, but stones were few and far between, and in desperation we'd throw dirt or weeds which showed how ridiculously harmless we were. Canine attitude adjustment required a stone and good aim.

About an hour later the sentenced dog had the audacity to prance into our project compound wearing a grin. He was smooth-coated, fit and confident -- not one of those mangy half-starved worm-riddled pie dogs that snarls one minute and cowers the next.

Hemanta took the dart gun, stepped out the door and deftly approached. Suddenly yellow pie remembered something, and turned around to retrace his steps. The dull pop of the gun was answered with a single soprano yelp, and the dog dashed toward the hatisar with the dart dangling from his shoulder.

Bishnu and the shikaris ran after the dog in their musical flip flops, while Hemanta cursed them for letting him get away. A few minutes later they were bearing our tormentor's limp body in a sling of muslin. It was a hot afternoon, and the men stashed the dog in the shade of the bungalow.

An hour later Hemanta was again reading the riot act. A shikari had just discovered the dog stumbling toward the hatisar, but instead of catching the escapee, he decided to report it. The chastened man took his medicine well, and then ran through camp cheerfully calling his fellows for assistance.

A few minutes later I watched the smiling shikaris perform a feat almost as remarkable as the Indian rope trick. They had managed to balance the limp dog on a bamboo pole. Not to worry, Sahib, they reported. The kookoor (dog) had gotten only halfway to the hatisar when he conked out again from the ketamine.

From the bungalow's porch I watched them plop yellow pie in the shade. He was again in slumber, but periodically he raised his head and looked about like a bleary-eyed drunk.

A half hour later we had retreated from the afternoon heat. A brain-fever bird called like a broken record as Hemanta dozed in his room, I wrote notes on the porch, and the crapulous yellow pie lay in the shade.

Then a barefoot middle-aged Tharu woman from the hatisar came striding into the compound with the confidence of George C. Patton. Yellow pie struggled to his feet and stumbled toward his mistress with a crooked smile and wagging tail. The lady halted in front of Hemanta's bungalow, and my colleague meekly presented himself.

The moving discourse that followed was in Nepali and lasted 10 minutes. Kookoor (dog) was the only word I understood, but I could read the body language and saw the tears. The lady was turbulent with emotion, and to say she was pissed doesn't do justice to her mood. Her discourse had a terribly humbling effect on me, and it transformed Hemanta in a way I had never seen before. Between her pronouncements he simply mumbled like a parishioner at mass.

When she was finished she marched away with yellow pie at heel.

"Well," I said. "I don't know about you, but I feel like a real turd. So you might as well give me the details."

Hemanta spoke very slowly with long pauses and a frozen grin, as if in shock.

"Well, the kookoor is her dog. She fed it from her own breast, cleaned up its shit, and loves it like one of her children."

"Is that all?" I asked.

"Well, she also used a lot of expletives."

"And that's it?"

"Okay, she said Brahmins like me should be used for leopard bait, and not helpless dogs."

The old office building of the hatisar, His Majesty's Government
of Nepal (under King Birendra), 1984 (building now gone).

Stalwart pariah dogs -- Part 1

"It is on record that in the station of Gumsoor not a single dog escaped, and nearly every resident of India who has ever camped out in the jungle where leopards are, or has lived in 'the hills' has had some tragic experience of this mania of the leopard for dogs." Belgravia, 1883

Back in my Nepal days, there was a small patch of scrub jungle in the dusty town of Narayanghat. It was on the west side of town not far from the Tikoli Reserve Forest. Like a lot of Nepal's terai it looked rough and scraggly. In fact, it mirrored much of what had happened to that exotic belt of jungle when foreign aid and DDT opened the area in the 1950s. With the threat of malaria gone, the local Tharu people, who were resistent to the disease found they had new neighbors from the hills, and the land started to change. Men and boys had long since lopped and cut down the trees, women had gathered the sticks for firewood, and goats and cattle had stripped the forbs and grass. The remaining thicket was a thorny wasteland.

In the early 1980s the local jemandar or headman decided to make use of the land and hired villagers to slash the thicket. In the center of the thicket they found an opening littered with bones. The Smithsonian Nepal Tiger Ecology Project was going full tilt at the time, and word of the find reached the American and Nepali graduate students working on the project.

The bones were of pariah or pie dogs, and there were many. The villagers had found a leopard's lair beside a dusty road in a busy little town. The number of bones was testimony to the leopard's many successful forays into the village, and the thicket had been the perfect hideout.

It seems no one had seen or heard the cat, and if anyone heard the cries of dying dogs it probably didn't register, because dog noise is the night song of the Nepalese village. Rarely does anyone notice a missing pie dog -- they are more or less communal property. Dogs come and go, and in Narayanghat they were a sustainable resource. If the smell of carrion drifted from those scraps of dog meat in the leopard's lair, they blended well with the town's organic ambience.

The leopard's fondness for dogs is well known in rural Asia, and baiting leopards with a village pie dog was an acceptable practice of colonial sportsmen like J.A. Duke, who nearly 80 years ago was moved to pen his experience with one. Indian civilian's like Duke, a policeman and a hunter, were frequently sought to shoot maneaters, rogues, crop raiders, and other forms of nuisance wildlife.

In this case, the villagers had appealed for relief from a leopard that had been killing livestock.

It worked like this. If the hunter couldn't find and stake out a fresh kill, he had his shikaries peg a live bait animal to a short tether in a small opening in the jungle. Then he hid in a machan or tree stand within close shooting range.

Success depended on procuring a suitable bait animal. Suitability meant that the creature would make enough noise to lure the quarry within shooting range, that it was readily available, and that it could be had for free or at minimal expense.

Duke didn't have the heart to use a tail-wagging half-grown pup. So next he tried a goat. It assumed a "statuesque attitude beside the peg to which it was tied and remained absolutely silent". So much for that one. Another goat attempted suicide by hanging on the rope and "never opened its mouth". Then a pie dog was found, but it's muteness also earned it dismissal.

In Duke's words, "...I was getting a bit fed up and pessimistic. . . .However, I said another dog must be produced."

Finally the shikaris found a stalwart pie dog that showed promise, but it revealed its suitability only after they whacked it a few times with a cane. "The dog was naturally furious and expressed his feelings in fierce growls, and, thank goodness, two or three loud barks." The dog was tethered to the peg and Duke took up his shooting position.

"Not long afterwards the silence was rent by a series of howls, growls, and barks from the dog...," which Duke saw dancing about on its chain facing off the invisible foe lurking in the shadows. With the next uproar the leopard revealed itself in the torchlight. It was circling and swatting at the defiant dog, "but it was obviously deterred from going right in and killing with his teeth by the dog's galant and terrific defence".

Duke shot the leopard, which dashed off and died, while the dog watched its disappearance into the brush with vociferous bravado. As he climbed down from the tree, the dog "...managed to detach the chain and bolted off into the jungle, naturally in the opposite direction to that of the leopard."

Duke noted, "I am glad to record he rolled up in his village alright and complete with chain. He had lost a good deal of skin from his face and chest, but so far as I know is alive and well to this day."


Reference

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9405E4DA133BE033A2575AC0A96F9C94629FD7CF

Duke, J.A. 1929. A stalwart pariah dog. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, XXXIII(2):428-430.

Vile epithets and the dangers of learning foreign language

"The men of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan mainly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and vile epithet evidently supplied a long felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog and Canoe."
The Arctic Prairies, 1911, Ernest Thompson Seton

The need to use virile Saxon comes at a young age. We were highly amused when a friend's son, wrought with angst over a childhood vexation told his parents he wished he could swear. He made it quite clear that his limited English was simply unequal to the task of expressing his frustration. I always thought that Zachary might have already known of a few tangy words, and was discretely asking permission to use them.

My first awareness of virile Saxon came when I was in Kindergarten. My grandfather and father had a fascinating language of their own. They used special words whenever they worked together. I thought I was entitled to use "the man's language". I never knew my mother was capable of such swift and decisive movement until the morning I exclaimed, "You dumb bastard!" It was probably one of the rare instances of single trial learning in my youth.

Somewhere I heard that biologists, the earthiest variety of scientist-- are more prone to use expletives than say, physicists or geologists. Among biologists, they say zoologists use racier language than botanists.

I am not sure any of this is true, but I always assumed that Steinbeck sanitized his portrayal of Ed Ricketts as Doc in Cannery Row. If Ricketts was as "concupiscent as a rabbit" he must have seasoned his speech.

Now the flashbacks:

ca 1979: Yenching Palace (a Chinese restaurant), Connecticut Avenue, Washington DC
We are zoo staffers prepared to celebrate the kind of personnel change that makes you sing, "Ding dong the witch is dead". The management knows us and seats us on one side of the room among a few other diners. We order steamed dumplings and beer while our mentor, who opts for Wild Turkey begins his catharsis -- a one-man passion play of sweeping erudation, surreal outbursts, and brooding pathos -- richly seasoned with expletives. An hour passes before we order food. Three hours later we are burned out, and it's time to go. That's when we notice that all the other customers are dining at the farthest corner of the room.

And now the faux pas of learning a language.

August, 1965: a hut on the banks of Rio Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico
I am learning vernacular Spanish from the natives (mainly a working guy named Ruben), and am much taken with slang words, like cabron (billy goat). We refer to each other as cabrones. I know it means more than billy goat, but I'm clueless to its nuanced and vile usage. Reno, and Dave and I are dining at the home of a humble family of campesinos, when Ruben announces that I have taught myself Spanish. This is a cue to perform. I do my little routine (all in present tense) and then lightly refer to Ruben as "un cabron". I am on a roll, and fail to notice the family's mortified body language. Ruben apologizes and explains that I don't know what I am saying.
"No, no, no, no no!" I insist. "Es verdad. Ruben esta un cabron muy grande."
When I realize how furiously Ruben is backpeddling, the damage has been done, and the rest of the meal is as solemn as a wake. I now know that cabron is not a word of mixed company.

1980s: an airport following the annual conference of the American Society of Mammalogists
Recognizing two gals from the meetings, I buy them coffee as we wait for our flights.They are grad students from Louisiana State University, with field experience in Brazil. "What about language problems?", I ask. They tell of a fellow student studying bats who approached a young woman at an airport to practice his Portuguese. (Yeah, right). The turning point was when he told her, "There's a fly in your hair." The lady politely replied he was mistaken, and the conversation quickly fizzled. Later he learned there are two words for hair: pele (fur) and cabelo (hair). The young man understandably used the word for fur and pelt -- pele. It was just bad luck. It also means pubic hair.

December 1, 1982: Delhi Airport, Security Check line (RNAC flight to Kathmandu)
I strike up a conversation with a couple of young Indian architects boarding the same flight. At the body frisking stop, one of them has an altercation with the security officer. "What happened?", I ask afterwards. "He is a silly old bum." He explains that the customs inspector was obviously from Haryana, so he addressed him in Haryani as "friend". The customs inspector correctly identified the architect from the Punjab, and assumed the architect was being a smart ass by using the Punjabi word that sounds the same. "What does that word mean?" I innocently ask. "It means the '(mammary) glands of a prostitute'!"

January, 1990. Casino Hotel, Trichur, Kerala
"Can you tell me what he's saying?" the redhead (my wife) asks with an embarrassed look. Our Keralite friend smiles and patiently repeats "How was the bed wetching?" (His accent is Malayalam, not the Hindi we hear mimicked so often.) I translate. "He wants to know, 'How was the bird watching?'" Later she tells me she thought he was asking, "How was the bed wetting" I admit it sounded a lot like that.

April, 1998. Chatthin Wildlife Sactuary, Burma
The premonsoon heat is terrible, and the redhead is not having fun. When the boyish Aung Moe delivers the cool drinks and notices her forlorn look, he timidly asks. "Scuse me, are you boring"?

Smoky memories

There's a fire in the mountains about 50 miles away. We're not in danger, but the smoke plumes over us during the day, and flows down the canyons at night. The Sacramento valley looks like an inland sea, the hills are gray, and the house smells like chipotle, which isn't bad . . . for a while anyway.

I woke up at 3:07 last night with an acrid presence in my sinuses. Couldn't sleep. The security light next to the house kept going on and off -- thirsty skunks at the water trough, I guess. Then came the smoky memories . . . .

A sunny spring day in 1950, Lafayette Elementary School, San Francisco
I'm looking towards the classroom window and freedom outside, smelling burning eucalyptus leaves in Golden Gate Park. It's beautiful outside, and I hear the cries of peacocks in the park . . . why am I being held captive? Then the teacher calls my father for a meeting. Apparently he is clueless. Unless he can influence my behavior, she dreads another week of school. She advises him to lower his expectations for my future. My mother says he was rather glum that weekend.

1952. San Francisco. Geary street between 40th and 39th avenues
We hear the fire engines before we smell the smoke. Burning linoleum. When the firemen arrive, my friend Clayton, who lives in the burning house is dancing and leaping for joy. He started the fire. Luckily the fire department puts it out before it reaches the basement, where we used to play with a box of machine gun ammo left over from the war.

1958, A Thanksgiving fieldtrip to Bridleveil Campground (now closed), Yosemite National Park
A field trip for science nerds--student members of the California Academy of Sciences. It is cold, so cold that my fellow nerds are raiding my plant press for newsprint to insulate their sleeping bags. This is irritating, but I can't complain. My bag needs insulation too. We also warm our feet in front of the campfire, and I am the only one who doesn't heed the smell of burning rubber. It is hard keeping up with my friends wearing boots with curled soles.

1982, December. Royal Chitawan National Park, Nepal
The sun is a red rubber ball. At 3:00 PM there's enough smoke in the air that you can look at it without burning holes in your retinas. The villagers are lighting fires in and out of the park. Not to worry, they're not wildfires. Indian rollers and drongos follow the flames and glean smoke-dazed insects with frazzled wings. The firing of the terai is an ancient rite that's good for ungulates. In a few weeks chital and great one-horned Asian rhinos, not to mention cattle and buffaloes will be munching on the greensward. Burning grass smells sharp, but burning sal (Shorea robusta) smells like incense.

c. 1985. Chitawan again, Smithsonian-Nepal Tiger Ecology Project
Sweating in my skivies under a mosquito net, upstairs in a wooden bungalow, I am a dysenteric zombie trapped in the stench of burning elephant dung. There is no escape. The mahouts burn green dung balls as a nightly ritual. It's a sanitary practice. Like Gunga Din, Bishnu delivers electrolytes and bottles of water three times a day. I make dozens of trips to the loo, day and night. A Swedish tour group sees me creaking down the stairs in my stained skivies. They think I'm a druggie. I don't care. My only goal is to get to the loo without you-know-whating myself.

At 4:30 the redhead asks if I want the radio on. I do.

The BBC reports the state of the world. Pavarotti has died and Putin is selling arms to Indonesia . . .

There will be no more double espresso iced coffees with lunch.