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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK:M.Krishnan: Sambar near smouldering trees:The Sunday Statesman:15 January 2017
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SAMBAR NEAR SMOULDERING TREES

" YEARS ago, when I was in a valley in the Deccan ringed with hills, each March great fires would sweep the peripheral jungles and watching the flames ascending the hills, I would wonder how the wild animals fared in these manmade conflagration. Then, one March, I had the curiosity to follow in the wake of the fire. Along with a young Boya I climbed a hill in the morning, and soon came to the jungles, where the ground was burnt and black, and even the trees charred for some eight feet up their boles, though many were still in fresh, green leaf and some in vivid bloom. We were looking for earth-bound creatures, like snakes, that the fire had killed, and found none -- according to the boy with me, the smaller snakes had gone underground, and the larger had taken to the water to escape the flames.

As we climbed to the hilltop, the breeze in our faces and the burnt grass deadening our steps, we came upon an uprooted tree lying in a clearing, still cursing the fire which had died down and grown cold elsewhere -- these dry-timbered, fallen trees often smoke and smoulder for weeks or even months after the forest fires, once their heartwood is aglow, the embers within the boles keeping them burning through dewfall and light rains: the patterns of white ash on the ground tell of the way the trees lay along after the fire had consumed their wood entirely.

WHAT surprised me was not that the fallen tree is still burning days after the fire, but that half a dozen Sambar was lying close to the smoking trunk basking in the warmth of the fire. It was nearly nine in the morning and the sun was hot on our backs; all mist and dew had long since dissipated and even the earth was sun-warmed. A movement by my companion betrayed us to the deer, which were up and away in a flash without even sounding their usual bell of alarm.

TWO had been lying on the wood-ash as their forms in it showed, but the rest had been snuggling close to the embers in the heart of the tree. Later when I told a Boya, wise in the ways of these deer, what I had seen, he said that he too had noticed that they were fond of basking in close company near such fallen smouldering trees, but offered no explanation. Later still and in a drawing room, some sportsmen who fancied themselves pooh-poohed my account of what I had seen, accused me of imagination and worse, logically argued that no deer would snuggle up so close to live embers. I did not dispute the point with them, for I never dispute any point of Natural History with those who think that life is logic and whose only knowledge of our wildlife is limited to that needed to shoot an animal at sight with foolproof weapons.

Well three years ago I came upon proof of this same proclivity of Sambar in the Mudumalai Sanctuary in the Nilgiris, but though I saw the deer lying in the still-warm ash of the almost burnt out tree, they were gone before I could try for a snapshot and what I wanted was the indisputable evidence of a photograph. However, I got my pictures all right last month, in this same area.

A great Terminalia had fallen down, and lay smouldering and half consumed, on the slope of a nullah, partly obscured by the spiky stems of leafless saplings. A dozen Sambar basked by the burning tree, and the only way I could get a picture of them, on elephant back, was to cross to cross the nullah well above them and then descend towards the deer, risking showing myself against the skyline, always a bad way of approach. But it could not be helped, and the first time I had the sense to turn away and retreat the moment I saw that the deer were scared -- I was about 150 yards away then, and it was necessary to shorten this distance to 50 yards for clear picture.

Two days later, I tried again, and got some pictures from far away, too far away as I realised when I had developed my negatives. I gave the deer a rest of three days, and then made my third attempt, without scaring them. I took fully an hour to cover the last hundred yards, stopping for minutes on end frequently; some of the Sambar got up and went away, but they did not go far, and after a while they returned and lay down by the tree again. Once men on elephant back have been "accepted" in this manner, it is usually possible to get quite close to Sambar without scaring them, but I did not do so because I could not get both the deer and the thin, low-hanging smoke into the picture if I moved nearer -- moreover, I was extremely keen on not running the risk of disturbing the deer. After taking my pictures, I made my exit as quietly as I could from the scene, leaving the Sambar still basking by the fire. My photographs, when enlarged to a big size, show the recumbent deer and the smoke clearly enough, but I do not know how the half-tone screen will affect the small print reproduced here.

What stuck me as significant was the fact that the deer had stuck to their rendezvous for over a week, though disturbed twice. Both times I noticed that they made their getaway in twos and threes -- evidently the basking group, which included three fawns and two stags, was a composite one, made up of several parties. Sambar continue to bask by these smouldering trees, usually in exposed situations, till well into the afternoon, chewing the cud from time to time.

On all three days, despite an early morning start, by the time I could get the smouldering Terminalia the sun was well up, and scorchingly hot. Perhaps it is something in the smoke, and in the contact of wood-ash against the skin, that they like, though, of course, it is impossible to be sure that it is not the additional heat of the fire that is the draw. One can never be sure of such things with such wild and wayward creatures as Sambar, the deer that are more truly symbolic of the forest.

In fact we know very little about the habits and prejudices of Sambar, though men have hunted them for centuries, and perhaps there are more legends about them than any other kind of deer. There is the story of their swinging by their necks and antlers from elevated boughs and the mystery of their throat patches, for example, both of which should have had much closer factual verification than they have had so far. Even in the jungle fruits and other things they eat, Sambar are peculiar. Someday I hope to give a fairly full account of these things in this column, but here I may say that Sambar love the fruit of Randla dumatorum, other species of Randla, so "hot" and potent that poachers use the fruit for poisoning fish -- they are so inordinately fond of the fruit of Terminalia bellerica.

It is well known that in cold places, Sambar lie down in pools in the winter mornings, because the water then is less cold than the frost-laden air. Could it be that they lie up near smouldering logs after the sun is well up, because the fire is hotter than the sun?"

-M. Krishnan

This was published on 24 May 1964 in The Sunday Statesman

#The photograph of a Sambar group lying and basking close to a smoking log is not reproduced here.(Record Image)