A Homely Wild Encounter

In my days of ‘House Arrest’ (the board exam preparatory leave), birding was banned and photography was prohibited. So the only way to be close to nature was reading more and more about her. Among all the books I’ve read, my favourite is the ‘Book of Indian Animals’ by S.H.Prater. On reading that book (for the second time!) my attention was drawn towards creatures which usually kids of my age would ignore for being unappealing- Bats, Mongooses, Civets, Ground Shrews and even Rodents! Of these I found mongooses the most interesting.
In front of my house there is a small nullah which provides an ideal location for the mongooses to flourish. From my balcony I’ve seen generations of mongooses following this pattern to reach their feeding grounds- moving stealthily from the nullah to my neighbours to the right, climb their boundary wall and jump exactly adjacent. But on a fine afternoon, the route had changed. An adult mongoose entered the house of the left neighbours and as usual I had seen it. Luckily no one was at home so I did not want to forgo the opportunity to photograph it. I ran to my backyard hoping to get the right angle. But what I saw next was bewildering. Stealthily I strove to my backyard and not an inch away from me was the mongoose I was looking for. It ran backwards to get away from the nuisance (me). I ran towards the verandah and yet again missed it by an inch. This time it moved backwards slowly and flashed an angry look leading me to clasp my claws. From my balcony, mongooses looked so cute but when it was just a foot away from me, it was just too frightening. Yet without budging a bit, I carefully picked up my camera but sensing my move the mongoose, intelligent as they are known to be, again ran to my backyard from the other side proving its wisdom. Even I ran to the backyard from the opposite side to get a front view of the creature. I felt as if I were a press photographer running everywhere to capture a controversial celebrity in my camera! So finally at my backyard I got a good snap of the mongoose. After this, the mongoose climbed a small tree and jumped to the compound of the apartment behind my house.
Such was my first face-to-face encounter with a wild mammal and surprisingly it was in my own arena! Obviously my enthu grows more to see more of these wonderful creatures.