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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan: Epicurean to the core: The Sunday Statesman : 22 March 2015
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EPICUREAN TO THE CORE

"TAMIL literature goes back far beyond the available record. Works anterior to about the second century AD are now lost to us, though there is ample evidence that there was a considerable body of such literature. Some of the older poems survive only in fragments and allusions and we do not even know who wrote them. One such ancient stanza begins with the line, " IN the Courtyard Where Squirrels Play", and the man who wrote it is known to us only as the author of IN THE COURTYARD WHERE SQUIRRELS PLAY.

So, some 2,000 years ago, the Palm Squirrel was already a familiar creature about our dwellings, playing in the courtyards and seeking food in and around human habitations. Considering the antiquity of this association, it is surprising how little we know about what it likes in the important matter of food!

The Palm Squirrel is an epicure, and takes endless pains to get just the things what it fancies. It likes the nectar at the base of the flowers, particularly the flower of the Yellow Oleander. It creeps along the twigs to the fresh-blown flower, detaches the corolla tube, holds it in its forepaws and licks the base -- looking, for the moment, like some sylvan sprite out of a fairytale blowing a golder trumpet -- then it drops the corolla and goes to the next flower. It is no less fond of the bloom of the drumstick tree and spend hours each day clinging expertly to the frail twigs, often upside down, to get at the small flowers and imbibe their sweet secretions. Many other flowers, too, are sought out for their nectar, among these the Indian Coral Tree and Red Silk-cotton.

However, if you want to know how clever it is at climbing and hanging on, head downwards, to tenuous supports, you should watch it eating a mango. It chooses a fruit not fully ripe, the stalk of which will not give away too readily. Then holding on to the stalk and flowering axis with its hind feet, suspended head downwards, it eats the pulp around the stone, leaving the seed still hanging from the stalk at the end of the meal. You will find the white sun-bleached seeds still hanging from the tree weeks after the squirrels have feasted at a mango, for stripped of their load of pulp the seeds have not the weight to break the mature stalks.

Wood -apples, guavas, pomegranates, country almonds, and many other fruits, soft and hard in rind, the waxy coating on the bud-bearing twigs of the figs, termites (whose thin encrustations on trees are broken down squirrel-fashion, with an energetic nose), birds' eggs when available, are all relished and sought out. Occasionally, the Palm Squirrel will dig with its nose superficially, in loose garden soil -- I must confess that I am still not sure, after watching it many times, of the precise nature of food it unearths this way. The growing tips of many creepers are eaten, and I have seen it nibbling at a mushroom. What impresses the watcher even more than the variety of things it eats is the pains it takes, and at times it spends, seeking out choice tit-bits.

Squirrels often lie up for the night in roofs, especially where there is a cloistered space between the roof tiles and the ceiling tiles. Twice in such dormitories I have found, along with other evidence of the long occupation of the place by squirrels, many cleanly-stripped stones of the fruit of the Yellow Oleander. Squirrels do not eat the fruit on the tree, as Koels do, and though I have seen them sniffing at the fallen drupes on the ground, and even sampling them tentatively, I have not seen them bite and devour the pulp -- and these squirrels are hearty feeders when they come across food in bulk. It seems likely that the fruit of the Yellow Oleander, so very POISONOUS to humanity and cattle, loses its lethal potency when ripe or rotten and stored in their dormitories by Squirrels for consumption at leisure.

Purely as a matter of fact, and as no boast, I may say that I was the first to report the addiction of the Koel to the poisonous fruit of the Yellow Oleander -- years ago in this columns. The tree 'Thevetia neriifolia' is common in hedges and gardens in the Madras area, and during the past two years I have been keeping an occasional watch on these trees, and learned that Koels are even fonder of the fruit than I had thought.

Other creatures also peck and nibble at drupes at times but only the Koel is a regular addict. In fact, where the Yellow Oleander is not in a closely-clipped hedge, but allowed to flower and fruit, you will invariably find a Koel or two -- not as resident birds, but as furtive visitors, in the mornings and evenings, and where they are not disturbed, throughout the day.

I have already reported hoe the birds peck at the drupes and break off and swallow pieces of mesocrap. But many times in the recent past I have seen a Koel pick up a smallish (but almost ripe) drupe and swallow it whole! Incredible as that sounds, it is true, and, moreover, seems less unlikely with reflection. Koels (and Cuckoo tribe, generally) have very wide gapes and can and do swallow big, hairy caterpillars. However, the drupe is not swallowed at a gulp and with ease -- a considerable effort is needed before the bird can get the fruit down its throat, and the watcher can clearly see the throat bulge as the mouthful is swallowed.

I thought I should offer the reader photographic proof in addition to my word. Though the photography of a shy bird like the Koel in the shade of heavy foliage is no joke, I can not feel proud of my picture. But then I offer it as no picture but only as proof, and you can clearly see the bulging throat of the Koel, and the fruit still partly protruding from the wide-open mouth of the bird in the picture.

Both the Cock and the Hen Koel indulge in this feat of swallowing but of course more usually the break the fruit into pieces and eat only those pieces of pulp. Incidentally, only ripe or ripening fruits are eaten but the quantity consumed in a day is considerable -- probably quite sufficient to kill a man!"

-M. Krishnan


This was first published on 15 March 1959 in The Sunday Statesman

#Two photographs - Palm Squirrel eating ripening mango and Koel with bulging throat have not been reproduced.