forest hut

We witnessed something thrilling today. I’ll do my best to do the tale justice.

These days, Me and Shree take Sheri out for evening walks, from 4:00 to 5:00 pm. Each walk is almost an adventure on its own. Sheri reacts to about everything that moves (from pipits to cattle), and ends up landing us into a bit of drama. A similar thing happened today.

Today, we were going nowhere in particular, and were just walking around. After a perfectly normal half hour, we decided to take the sloping path to the river. As usual, I had Sheri’s leash wrapped around my fist, `cause you can never tell when she’ll just run off somewhere (like a projectile). I asked Shree to go ahead and check if the path was clear. Path-checking was more of a habit than a necessity, but, as we learnt, it was very important. Anyway, Shree gave us the all-clear, and me and Sheri trudged down the slope.

Okay, so picture this. We were walking down a slope leading to the river. The path we have taken is parallel to a fence. Ahead on our left, there are paddy fields, which have been taken over by weeds `cause of the dry season. The path is sparsely shaded by trees, which disappear completely as we go further down. Outside the east fence, some people are working in the neighbouring fields. The river is at the bottom of the slope (south). Maybe this will help.

Sheri, being Sheri, had to sniff every little rock and blade of grass, and it took us about 7 minutes to get to the bend in the path. That’s when we got our first surprise.

There, through a breach in the fence, about 40 meters ahead, came a large, white bull. He was snorting and grunting, had curved horns painted orange, and had a length of broken rope tied to his neck. We had seen this bull before, and he was always alone. Most bulls would be with their herd (hopefully followed by the rearers), but whenever we had seen this one, he was always snorting and grazing on his own.

As it crossed the path and entered the fields to graze (still about 40 meters), the people on the neighbouring field hollered at it to drive it away. The bull just stared at them, pawed the ground, snorted, and continued grazing. There was no chance at all of us going any closer. The people in the neighbouring fields were quite far away, and if we had gone too close, the bull would probably have charged us. And anyway, we were at a safe distance. I held Sheri firmly, and sternly told her to stay put, `cause all she wanted to do was go and say hi. Apart from the distance, we also had the advantage of height, the slope being riverwards.

And…that was it. At least till the next 10 minutes. The bull just kept grazing in the field, occasionally snorting at the horizon and swatting the flies with his tail. The people away started doing their own work again. The bull knew we were there, for it had thrown us some lazy glances, but his primary goal had now become to eat. We were starting to relax, knowing that we wouldn’t have to run for our lives from an apparently peaceful bull. After a watching it fervently for a while, we got bored and decided to leave. Little did we know.

Just as we were leaving, we heard bells tinkling again, and saw a group of cows, followed by the rearers approaching from the east side. The group consisted of three cows, a calf and two bulls. The whitish-tan bull in the lead was responding to the orange-horned one’s throaty roars. The group was slowly making its way to the east fence breach, to catch the path (on which we were), to go back up. As the group approached, the people in the neighbouring fields told the rearers to stop and take another path. But by then, most cows had already crossed the breach.

Now, we were totally hooked. We knew that if the bulls weren’t in the best mood, they could go at each other, and do some serious damage. There was a 50/50 chance that they would charge. The bull (let’s call him Herd-ruler) who had just entered through the fence, was grunting and snorting with some ferocity. The Orange-horn was thin and a little taller, but the Herd-ruler was heftier, and had horns better positioned for a fight. Both adversaries stared at each other.

The rearers, a man and a woman, noticed the other bull, and at once started hollering at the Herd-ruler to stay put. But it was too late. I heard the shrill scream “he’s gone after the other one!”. That’s when I knew, we were going to have a proper clash before us. As of Sheri, she got super worked up and wanted to join what she thought was play, and she would have dragged me down too, had Shree not pitched in and helped.

Once we had Sheri under control, we saw the Herd-ruler was trotting towards the Orange-horn, who stood his ground. The man chased after the Herd-ruler, shouting at him to make him stop, but that just made the latter faster at charging towards his opponent. Each paddy field was about 4 feet higher than the previous one up the slope, and we saw the Herd-ruler clear that in one leap, all the time snorting heavily. The Orange-horn just stood his ground, waiting for his opponent to come to him.

We watched with bated breath as, below, the Herd-ruler clambered to the same field as the Orange-horn, and both charged at each other with furious snorts. The smash of their horns was audible even above the hollering of the rearers and the outraged chatter of the birds. The grunting warriors were locked for a few moments as the man who had followed the Herd-ruler tried to separate them (I respect him for his great courage). But, the two bulls had no wish to stop the fight, oh no!

The Orange-horn pushed the Herd-ruler to the fence, and would probably have gotten him to his knees as well. All of a sudden, with a renewed burst of energy, as though inspired by his owner’s shouts (which he must have taken as motivation), he forced the Orange-horn back. In fact, the Herd-ruler charged back so hard that he almost pushed the Orange-horn onto the path. Now, remember the rest of the Herd-ruler’s group? Well, they had reached the path just where the Herd-ruler had pushed his rival. The younger black bull and the calf rushed in (amid more shouts), to help the Herd-ruler. The black bull drove the Orange-horn straight into a mound, after which, the latter fled. Up the slope. Right at us.

All this time, we had been super engrossed in the fight. And now, suddenly, it hit us (Sheri not included), that the Orange-horn was coming right up the slope, pursued by the Herd-ruler and the black bull. That is all I saw before I panicked and started running up the path, dragging Sheri behind me. Just imagine, the Orange-horn rushing up, towards us, dust flying everywhere. The adrenaline kicked in, and we scampered up the slope like chased squirrels. I didn’t see anything else in the haze of fear and panic as we raced up, dragging an unwilling Sheri along (who wanted to investigate). When I reached the top, panting, I turned around to see what was going on. Me, Sheri and Shree had gotten away just in time.

The rearers, who seemed to have gotten matters under control, were bringing their herd up. We put some distance between ourselves and the advancing group, and watched them go towards the village. I am no experts on bulls, but I think the Herd-ruler – who was leading the group – walked with a swagger, and had smug look (my perception) on his face. There was no sign of the loner, who was probably still down in the fields, sulking.

When we had finally got our breathing steady, and had convinced Sheri to get going, we started moving back towards our farm.