Don't let the animals lose the fight against summer
The recent death of a few animals in my locality due to severe dehydration has moved me to tears, and I urge people to have a heart and respond.
The relevance of stray dogs in the food chain and our communities is a matter of never-ending debate among pro and anti-canine speakers. Keeping that argument aside, if evolution and the laws of nature have permitted the birth of puppies to a stray bitch, it is inhuman on our part to deprive the animal of its right to thrive on this earth. A recent ruling from the Delhi High Court penalizing the act of killing stray dogs is commendable. It portrays the humanitarian angle adopted by the legal system after analysing the importance of dogs in our ecosystem. You need not always have to do or commit something to kill someone. Being right there but not doing something that can prevent an animal from dying is a vicious mens rea for its killing.
I found a two-month-old unconscious puppy lying uncared by its mother and people of my own species who live in self-declared civilized societies. He was groaning and moaning, signalling its inevitable death. I brought him home in a carrier, gave him cool water and milk to drink, and let him sleep on a clean cloth. In the evening I saw him walking around and trying to maintain a standing posture. In the night, I could hear him moaning again. The next day morning, I realized that he is running septicaemia, a life-threatening condition due to multiple bite marks and injuries on his body, which were infested with maggots (worms). I registered his case with Blue Cross of Chennai. However, in the hour that followed, the animal breathed his last. I buried him in the backyard. It severely hurts my conscience to think of the fact that he did not die all of a sudden due to an accident or poisoning. Rather, he died a slow death due to dehydration and infection. Few sips of water in time could have saved the poor guy’s life.
Exactly a week later, the security guard noticed a foul smell originating from one of the stormwater drains. Drains are usually covered to a large extent with stone slabs. Men were tasked to lift the heavy slab covering the drain. What they saw shocked all of us – the rotting carcass of a dead cow. Clearly, the poor animal died at least a week back. Her body was swollen beyond recognition due to the accumulation of toxic gases from decomposition inside her body. Maggots were eating an entire length of its tissue, with a storehouse of worms underneath its skin. More than what we saw inside the drain, what was even more mysterious was the reason or circumstances that led a large animal to die inside a drain. She had a rope around her neck which proved that she was domesticated for the dairy business.
My hypothesis – On a scorching sunny day, she slipped and fell into the drain at an uncovered area of the drain located a few metres away. The poor four-legged creature failed to pull herself out and remained miserably trapped inside the drain that could be about four feet deep. In such a situation, the way of least resistance is always forward. Naturally, she pushed herself forward through the closed stormwater drain, in the hope of finding a way out. As temperatures soared, her primary objective was to find some water. But it is a stormwater drain and it is dry all year round, except during rains. Being trapped inside a closed drain, it can be reasonably assumed that her owner must have searched for her, but in vain, as her moos could not have been heard. Eventually, dehydration and suffocation drove her to death. What a painful death to befall a poor creature that fed its nutritious milk to humans! Not a single human could save her from dying. She pushed herself to her inevitable death.
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