Critters in the City

The other day, a friend was narrating her experience of strange critter sightings at home during the Covid- induced WFH. This set me thinking about the curious cases of critter encounters at my home.

During the daily ritual of collecting dried clothes from the clothesline, one lone Kurta was on the ground without its metal hanger. Could not find the hanger despite a thorough search. Lost it was, until a month later when a couple of squirrels helped! They were chasing a large gecko up the old Jamun tree across the road. As I followed their noisy pursuit, I spotted the missing hanger on a broken branch at the top of the tree. I then recalled the visit of a gang of monkeys - every year they raid the fruit trees in the park across the road. They had visited our garden too and nipped off buds, shoots and flowers. Though I was miffed at their mischief, I could not help chuckling when one young monkey yanked off a towel from the neighbour’s clothesline and wore it like a toga and pranced around!

The next year, thingummies started to go missing from our house. The most annoying was the case of a missing sock – washed and neatly bundled pairs kept atop a shoe cupboard. To my consternation, only one of the pair went missing.

I stopped keeping the paired socks on the shoe cupboard. And just when I was marveling at my rather simple solution, the washing machine conked out! The top flap of the machine had all our lost thingummies and the missing socks! A mouse had made its home there! The rags gone, the washing machine started, smoothly. The utility area is now covered with a finer metal mesh.

Six months went by without any major incident.

One morning while cleaning the stove-top, I spotted a few mud-like crumbs. On a closer look, it turned out to be the remnants of chikoo fruits. A long line of red ants was scurrying away with tiny loads of brown matter, through a gap in the window, into the garden below. I then realized critters, big or small, will give us company whether we like it or not.

The best of these critter encounters though was that of an Indian mongoose. It seemed drawn to the greater coucal which had come down the tree to peck at the badam kernels on the ground. Sadly, after a couple of days, the mongoose was not to be seen. And the coucal continues to perch on the upper branches of the raintree.