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12. Raising Sheru
- University Press of Colorado
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— 95 — 013 From my study, the knock at my door sounded faint, tentative. Usually, those who come to my home after office hours are disturbed —angry about foreign tourists not paying their bills, marauding wolves killing livestock, or crop-raiding shapo or kiang (the endemic wild sheep and wild ass). As wildlife warden for Ladakh, an area slightly smaller than Scotland, I was accustomed to afterhour visits from locals with wildlife problems and those who wanted to talk about the conservation of Ladakh’s unique wildlife heritage. Assigned to Leh from Srinagar, I tried to maintain an open business and personal environment, sensitive to being a nonlocal and a Muslim in India’s largest enclave of Tibetan Buddhists. Padma, my assistant, personal secretary, and housekeeper, bolted into the study. “Come quickly, Nasier Saab” he said. The old woman at my door looked tired and worried. “Sheru, sheru” (Urdu for big cat) she said in an excited, desperate tone, holding up her dilapidated basket so I could see the contents. Swaddled inside were two baby snow leopards, both sound asleep. I invited her in Raising Sheru N a s i e r a . K i t c h l o o iNdia—Faced with a difficult choice, a wildlife warden chooses to raise a young snow leopard. N a s i e r a . K i t c h l o o — 96 — and asked Padma to make tea. All important matters in Ladakh begin and end with tea. Slowly, the old one began to relax and let her story unfold. She was from Hinachey, a small village in the Nubra Valley about 75 miles north of Leh. To reach Leh, she had journeyed all day on a crowded bus made worse by August heat and a winding road that climbs up and then down Khardung La, at over 17,500 feet India’s highest motorable pass. She had found the two cubs near the family dwelling, the traditional yak hair tent of nomadic herding families. The barking of two small camp dogs had caught her attention. She went to investigate, finding the cubs huddled together, hissing at the young dogs. She found no evidence of the mother, and later that evening she asked the family if anyone had seen any evidence of a snow leopard while shepherding. No one had. That night, after considerable discussion, the family decided that the cubs should be brought to me, the chief caretaker of Ladakh’s wildlife. As Buddhists, they could not abide to let the cubs perish in the wild. The old woman told her story and then looked to me for an answer, for relief. Her sad eyes and steady speech betrayed no subversion in her explanation; she appeared genuinely distressed over the young cubs’ well-being. Over the years I had learned to take care in such cases, as it is not uncommon for herders to kill snow leopards in retaliation for the animals having killed their livestock. For some, it comes down to basic survival—even Buddhists have limits to the degree of loss they can tolerate from predators. Livestock loss can devastate poor families barely eking out a living in the high pastures. And snow leopards are efficient killers, especially of penned animals. I personally attended to an incident where a single snow leopard had attacked forty-five sheep and goats from a herd of seventy-five. About half were killed, suffocated by bites to the windpipe; the others were exhausted from fright. Snow leopards have been known to kill over a hundred animals in a single night, a killing-frenzy behavior that continues to baffle the experts. Much of my time was spent trying to find ways to reduce such encounters between the snow leopard and the people who share its world. But this old woman presented me [44.210.120.182] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:13 GMT) R a i s i n g S h e r u — 97 — with a vastly different situation. Two wild snow leopard cubs were suddenly in need of human care—my care—to survive. I received my education in wildlife management from one of India’s finest colleges and studied abroad on several occasions, granting me a unique perspective on my profession from both Eastern and Western viewpoints. Yet all my training failed me when faced with the penetrating eyes of this gentle woman. She looked to me as the protector, the arbiter of wisdom in all matters...