Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Wallowing in the mire : The Sunday Statesman : 4 August 2019
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Wallow in the mire
(Elephant)

" AFTER A BATH, especially after swimming across a river, Elephants love nothing better than to kick up the earth into a fine powder with their forelegs, and to dust themselves all over their gleaming bodies with the dry earth.Very young calves,and even older calves do not indulge in these dust-baths after a plunge into water but the sub-adults do.If there is a patch of mire handy,they proceed to it a and squirt the mud all over themselves and while cows also indulge in this slinging of mud over themselves it is the grown bulls that seem fondest of it, wallowing in the mire till they have acquired a regular plaster of it over their bodies, heads and limbs.

Obviously, a wallow in the mire is cooling and gratifying when the sun (which our elephants do not like) is hot especially in dry summer. But even when it is cloudy and the air is humid, as during the monsoons,elephants love a mud-lark. I have watched a herd of a dozen elephants spend over an hour in a shallow, muddy pool on an overcast September day picking up the mire in the crook of their trunk tips and slinging it over themselves and even their fellows. Only a young cow, with an infant calf (barely a week old) refrained from the orgy. Even Quite young calves will lie down and play in the their trunks to fling it over themselves till they are older.

As said, it is the bulls, especially the lone bulls (which feel no urge to follow the herd when it moves off) that indulge most zestfully in these mud-baths.Years ago I came upon a tusker that was a deep crimson all over except for a little white showing through on his tusks he had dusted himself with some dry fine, crimson earth after a good mud-bath. However, the muddiest elephant I have ever seen was a long bull I saw in the Bandipur Sanctuary of Mysore in October,1968.

He was behind a big bush, and it had been drizzling, and for a moment I thought he was a huge anthill wet with the rain. Then it occurred to me that a wet anthill would not gleam with oozing mud, and I looked again and saw the anthill moving. He was looking at us from behind that bush,and when we stopped he came out into the open for a closer look - a tusker so comprehensively plastered with mud that even his tusks were a dark glistening raw umber, that had evidently been enjoying a thorough roll in a patch of deep mire, about a furlong away.

My picture, in black-and-white though clear enough, does not adequately convey the muddiness of old Muddy as I saw him then.He was just a moving mass of clayey wet earth, with no surface detail, and with his features merging into one another because of their common, umber- coloured earth nesa.

Various reasons have been assigned for this elephantine love of mud-other animals,too,pig rhinos and wild buffaloes(and even tame ones),love a good wallow in the mire.All these animals have thick hides,and the elephant and rhino with the hide much creased in addition. Undoubtedly mud serves to cleanse their creased and pitted skin more thoroughly then water especially when coated on after a plunge in water, for it clings on till dry and then flakes off.The virtues of a good plaster of mud as a cutaneous tonic and palliative area known even to smooth thin-skinned humanity, but probably this logical, cause-and-effect reasoning dose not adequately cover the question. There is also the recreational and voluptuous enjoyment of a mud-bath to be considered."

- M. KRISHNAN

@ This was published on 28 March 1971
# The photograph of a massive tusker has not been reproduced here