Thursday, July 30, 2009

Hunter gets hunted

The lush green lawn of our office premises draws in lots of colourful birds. Among them the mynahs. The mynahs are known to be aggressive and noisy but yesterday I witnessed a heart-rending scene.
I was reaching the canteen with my senior colleagues when I saw an innocent mynah pecking some insects or whatever on the quite lawns. Neither the naïve bird, nor me, expected a four-legged terror to spring from behind a tree at such rapid speed. The cat was not looking that ferocious, but brutal it indeed was. In a matter of seconds, it was all over. The victim’s struggle to live and the terminator’s rage to kill – the drama was all there.
The one relishing food was being relished. The surrounding mynahs did protest. They created a noisy scene and tried to poke the cat, but ultimately gave up.
When we finished our tea and returned, the leftovers of the mynah’s corpse was lying on the ground. We had had our sandwich and the cat its.
Additional input from Net: Mynahs feed on ground on insects, but take small vertebrates, occasionally eggs and nestlings of other birds, fruit and grain. They are considered a pest in Australia, where noisy winter roosts of several thousand occupy city trees and buildings.
PS: Just the earlier day, my Pakistani friend Ansar Salim saved a mynah from instant death by shooing away the same cat.

16 comments:

  1. ohh..that means the cat is a mynah killer....shooooo....

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  2. Strange are the ways of the world!

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  3. I had goosebumps with that meal comparison!!

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  4. Mosquitoes remind us that we are not as high up on the food chain as we think.

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  5. Sad ..cats have no money to buy lunch ...lets blame it on money.

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  6. Plants < Herbivores < Carnivores < Man < Zombies (and mosquitoes as mentioned by Anonymous)

    Nice :P

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  7. Hello my dear friend, Ramesh. I am writing to you on a brand new laptop as my old computer finally went kaput on me yesterday. I hope all is well with you today. I enjoyed your post though I am now feeling sorry for the poor birdy :( Peace to you. Namaste

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  8. I enjoy reading your blog.
    I think all our house cats have a tiger in them!
    Thank you for stopping by my blog.
    Sunny :)

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  9. O nature has no heart! poor bird. One of my cats a few years ago...wounded a Cockatiel and brought him in our home through our doggie door and left it at my feet as a gift. I immediately put him in a cage and tried after a few months to release him...but couldn't find the heart to do so knowing that all the cats in the neighborhood would eat him...he lived some good few years with me before he died a natural death.

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  10. struggle for existence

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  11. aah...survival of the fittest!

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  12. I have a cat at home but he is a lazy one! I may have to do the catching for him! He is happy with curd rice, milk and chapaathis!

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  13. the meal comparison was really effective!!

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  14. I like cats. I like birds. But, I have a problem with cat's that like birds. We feed wild birds during the winter and that also the neighbours cat even though I dislike it. =/

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  15. Ugh! what comparison ramesh. your meal and the cat's.????

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  16. At least the cat's lunch was fresh. I am not so sure about yours:)

    My friends cat is a lazy one too. Sits on the windowsill and doesn't move, even though the door to freedom is wide open. But as soon he moves to the summer cottage with his humans, he's out and about and comes home with a rabbit in his mouth! That's why I love cats. Unpredictable:)

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