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Lost — and found
Some time ago, The Hindu had reported that a 13-feet-long reticulated python had been found in the pygmy hippopotamus enclosure in the Vandalur Zoo. A Zoo official, explaining the intrusion, stated that the python could have escape
d from its enclosure when it was young, that this could have happened “four or five years ago”, and that it could have been feeding on the free-ranging small mammals inside the Zoo!
The story inspired B. Vijayaraghavan, IAS (Retd.), the Chairman of the Chennai Snake Park Trust, to narrate this delightful little yarn in his column ‘Random Harvest’ in the latest issue of Cobra, the Trust’s journal:
“At the time I was working in Chennai Secretariat, I heard a story of a lion being suddenly discovered there. On being interrogated, the lion said that it had escaped from a circus many months ago and had since then taken up residence in the lumber-room of the Secretariat without being noticed by anyone. When asked how it had managed to survive for so long (it looked remarkably well-fed), it replied that, whenever it felt hungry, it would surreptitiously feed on one of the staff members. The office was so outrageously overstaffed that the steady decline in its numbers went unnoticed for many months. Until one day, the lion, by mistake, fed on the boy whose daily chore it was to distribute tea to the staff. His absence, unlike that of the rest, was promptly noticed, a search was instituted and they stumbled on the lion sleeping contentedly in the lumber-room.”
Baron Munchausen seems to be having a field day in Madras.
S. MUTHIAH
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