REFLECTIONS
Guests from the forest
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Keeping his windows open led to meeting some interesting visitors. RUSKIN BOND writes of the ones who liven up his life.
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WHEN mist fills the Himalayan valleys and heavy monsoon rain sweeps across the hills, it is natural for the wild creatures to seek shelter. Any shelter is welcome in a storm — and sometimes my cottage in the forest is the most convenient refuge.
There is no doubt that I make things easier for all concerned by leaving most of my windows open — I am one of those peculiar people who like to have plenty of fresh air indoors — and if a few birds, beasts and insects come in too, they're welcome, provided they don't make too much of a nuisance of themselves.
I must confess I did lose patience with a bamboo beetle who blundered in the other night and fell into the water jug. I rescued him and pushed him out of the window. A few seconds later, he came whirring in again and, with unerring accuracy, landed with a plop in the same jug. I fished him out. Attracted no doubt by the light and warmth of my small sitting room, he came back circling the room like a helicopter looking for a good place to land. Quickly I covered the water jug. He landed in the bowl of wild dahlias and I allowed him to remain there, comfortably curled up in the hollow of a flower.
Sometimes, during the day, a bird visits me — a deep purple whistling thrush, hopping about on long dainty legs, peering to right and left, too nervous to sing. She perches on the windowsill, looking out at the rain. She does not permit any familiarity. But if I sit quietly in my chair, she will sit quietly on her windowsill, glancing quickly at me now and then just to make sure that I'm keeping my distance. When the rain stops, she glides away, and it is only then, confident in her freedom, that she bursts into full-threaded song, her broken but haunting melody echoing down the ravine.
A squirrel comes sometimes, when his home in the oak tree gets waterlogged. Apparently he is a bachelor; anyway he lives alone. He knows me well, this squirrel, and is bold enough to climb on to the dining table looking for titbits, which he always finds because I leave them there deliberately. Had I met him when he was a youngster, he would have learned to eat from my hand, but I have only been here a few months. I like it this way. I'm not looking for pets; these are simply guests.
Last week as I was sitting down at my desk to write a long deferred article, I was startled to see an emerald-green praying mantis sitting on my writing pad. He peered up at me with his protuberant glass-bead eyes, and I stared down at him through my reading glasses. When I gave him a prod, he moved off in a leisurely way. Later I found him examining the binding of Whitman's Leaves of Grass; perhaps he found a succulent bookworm. He disappeared for a couple of days and then I found him on the dressing table, preening himself before the mirror. Perhaps I'm doing him an injustice in assuming that he was preening. Maybe he thought he'd met another mantis and was simply trying to make contact. Anyway, he seemed fascinated by his reflection.
Out in the garden, I spotted another mantis, perched on the jasmine bush. Its arms were raised like a boxer's. Perhaps they're a pair, I thought, and went indoors and fetched my mantis and placed him on the jasmine bush, opposite his fellow insect. He did not like what he saw — no comparison with his own image — and made off in a huff.
My most interesting visitor comes at night, when the lights are still burning — a tiny bat who prefers to fly in at the door, should it be open and will use the window if there's no alternative. His object on entering the house is to snap up the moths that cluster round the lamps.
All the bats I've seen fly fairly high, keeping near the ceiling as far as possible and descending to ear level (my ear level) when they must, but this particular bat flies in low, like a dive bomber, and does acrobatics amongst the furniture, zooming in and out of chair legs and under tables. Once, while careening about the room in the fashion, he passed straight between my legs.
Had his radar gone wrong, I wondered, or is he just plain crazy?
I went to my shelves of Natural History and looked Bats, but could find no explanation for this erratic behaviour. As a last resort, I turned to an ancient volume, Sterndale's Indian Mammalia (Calcutta, 1884) and in it, to my delight, I found what I was looking for — "a bat found near Mussoorie by Captain Hutton, on the southern range of hills at 5,500 feet; head and body, 1.4 inch; skims close to the ground, instead of flying high as bats do. Habitat, Jharipani, N.W. Himalayas."
Apparently the bat was rare even then in 1884. Perhaps I've come across one surviving member of the species: Jharipani is only two miles from where I live. And I feel rather offended that modern authorities should have ignored this tiny bat; possibly because they feel that it is already extinct. If so, I'm pleased to have rediscovered it! I am happy that it survives in my small corner of the woods and I undertake to celebrate in prose and verse.
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