“My family was so excited to have me home that they suggested we go to the local zoo. I told them, ‘I don’t need to go to the zoo to see wild animals. I live in a zoo!’”
This is a series of stories about the animals I experienced or heard about while living in the hill station of Southern India, working as a music teacher at Kodaikanal international school.
Grasshoppers in hiding:
One of the simple things I enjoyed about living in India, was having someone clean my house several times a week and cook food for me. It felt so homey to walk in after a day with students to smell the fresh food on the stove and see the floor glistening from being swept and mopped (not a vacuum cleaner to be found in town). When my house cleaner, Lakshmi, first quoted me a price — I was thinking US prices for house cleaning and thought she meant that was for one time. She was actually quoting me a price for 3 times a week for a month. I so appreciated her help around my house that left me time to relax, reflect and write. One morning, after coming home to a sparkling clean house the night previous, I decided to make some rice. For some reason, instinct told me to take the inner lid off of my rice cooker before I turned it on. And as I lifted that piece off, I saw a grasshopper, slowly wiggle and expand. I think it was feeling a bit cramped in its hiding spot from the cleaning bonanza. After my initial startle reflex, I coaxed the grasshopper into climbing onto another pot, so I could take it outside. I assumed that this creature would gleefully jump to freedom outside my door. But instead, after getting my things ready for my day at school, I went outside and that grasshopper seemed to think this was a good home and that it would stay. I tipped the pot on its side and talked to this little guy to say it was ok to leave. Next, I tried to pick it up, no easy task either; as they have quite the suction cup feet. It decided instead to make a run out of avoiding being picked up and frantically moved in circles around the pot. Finally, at some point, I won the battle to free my visitor from my pots and my house and he finally headed for the grass outside.
Learning to live in this town at high elevation, required learning to heat my house. Since the gaps in the ceilings and floors were big enough to feel the breeze at times blowing through, small electric heaters did not make much of a dent in the damp cold. The main heat source for the houses were wood-burning stoves. The problem with this was my lack of fire starting skills. Lakshmi after a while realized I needed help with getting things warmer at home and she started loading wood and kindling into my stove so that I could just light a match to start it all when I came home. However, the wood was not dried and was often freshly off a tree when we would get it delivered to our house. So, I learned to stack wood inside to dry it. I also realized letting a small bit of kindling start to catch fire first seemed to work the best, with adding the big logs in after that got going. So, on this day about a week after seeing the grasshopper in my rice cooker, I open the wood burning stove to rearrange the firewood and I see something green jumping toward me. Another grasshopper or maybe the same one with a really intense death wish had thought the wood looked like a good place to take a nap. I’m happy I looked around and followed my instincts so I could save these little creatures.
Bison (Gaur) Grazing Through Campus:
On a first tour around the town of Kodaikanal, you will see large signs posted in nearly all the entrances to each campus warning you about the bison. In the posters, they look quite menacing, but in reality, as long as you don’t pester them, they are quite tame herbivores. But, the key point here is “Don’t get in their way!”
I have seen the bison along the road from a distance mostly, normally they are quietly eating their way through some bushes and if you don’t look carefully you will actually not notice them. However, you realize when close to a herd that you should use caution and basically move out of their path. The pictures that others have taken show this perfectly sculpted form. An herbivore that looks like he’s been working out every day with the massive, developed shoulder muscles and yellow, intent eyes. They are the equivalent to the deer at home, except on a much bigger scale, both in how much of the garden they will consume and how big they are.
One friend was walking home through the woods in the darkness and has lived in town his whole life, so he knows the trees and the ways to take short cuts in the dark. One time, however, without much lighting, he ended up running smack dab into the side of a bison. Both of them startled and he slowly backed up to give the bison a chance to go the other way. They are massive creatures and I sure as heck don’t want to make any of them upset with me, but from a distance, they are amazingly beautiful.
Monkey Business:
At the end of the school year, on a warm sunny day, we left the windows open and a few teachers had planned to get together to do some salsa dancing. We had some salsa music playing and were talking out in the hallway while we waited to see if anyone else would show up. And then I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye and came into the classroom to see this monkey hanging out in the window. He decided that the music was quite exciting. As I came into the room, he seemed to have no intention to immediately leave. He instead inspected the curtains that were waving about and climbed up on the chair to look — very intently- at the Persian rug type carpet hanging on the side wall.
I watched as he sat, like he was taking in a fine artwork exhibit, and stared at the pattern in the carpet and then kept touching it to feel it. I stayed on the other side of the room, just to make sure I was a safe distance away while this was going on. But, then he grabbed my water bottle. I could say — “what is the big deal about losing a water bottle to a monkey?” Except this one was glass with a rubber outer skin and I was worried that this monkey could injure himself with the water bottle if he managed to carry it off and it broke. So, I took my chances and made some noises and kind of stomped around a bit and finally the monkey hissed at me and dropped the water bottle. I grabbed that and left the room. I figured he could finish looking at things in peace and I could wait out in the hallway. I’m not sure if we ever actually did any dancing that day. But, I was entertained and amused by interacting briefly with this mischevious one.
As I was reflecting with the head of our K-8 school, Jessica about travels back to the US for vacation, she started laughing at one of her memories. “My family was so excited to have me home that they suggested we go to the local zoo. I told them, ‘I don’t need to go to the zoo to see wild animals. I live in a zoo!’”
We were sitting at the lunch table and the students were bubbling up with their stories about the visit of the monkeys in the dorms. One girl said, “Yeah! They were jumping on my bed!” another chimed in, “They got some honey from the kitchen and were eating it.” And a third shared, “The monkeys made a mess!”
All the buzzing about monkeys starts Jessica smiling and then laughing. Here’s the story she shared with me:
Working one day at the end of the term, when there were no students around in the school, Jessica looked through her stack of papers. She opened up the windows to the warm, sunny air and took a moment to enjoy the smell of the flowers outside. She smiled at the sight of the candy sitting on her desk, a reminder of all the student and teacher appreciation she was shown at the end of the semester. She took a mental note of the staff in their matching dark blue saris, moving in and out of some of the corridors outside, mostly content to have a quiet moment working by herself. Deciding it was time for a break, she headed down the hall to the toilet. She contemplated all the excitement of the students that had been shared during the semester, still chewing on a candy that the students had given her. Sweet and sticky, thoughts were ruminating in her mind.
A few minutes later, she walked back down the hallway, to her office and peeked in the door, looking at her desk. Certain that her swivel chair had been facing the door, she did a double take because clearly the chair was turned, facing away from her now. She wondered if the breeze had blown things around from the open window, but the air seemed pretty still and calm to her.
With a bit of curiosity, she started to approach her desk chair, only to see it slowly start to turn around to face her. As the chair swiveled, she looked into the eyes of the monkey staring her down. Jessica started screaming, and the monkey started hissing. The stare down continued with both of them startled, but neither backing down. This monkey was ready to run the school from this chair and had no plans to leave. Jessica now starts screaming “Monkeys!” and in a swirl of blue saris, everyone drops their cleaning tasks and comes running. Now, being outnumbered in the room, the monkey finally saunters out the window, to join friends waiting on the rooftop there. There is a frantic rush on everyone’s part to get the windows closed and Jessica is left a bit startled and out of breath.
In the aftermath, an admissions form sits in front of Jessica on her desk, yellow highlighter scribble across it, with no traces of the candy that she sampled earlier. She looks out the window to see the monkeys huddling together, intently focused on the monkey that was formerly occupying her chair. A tube of pink, flavored lip-gloss between its fingers, the monkey squeezes it multiple times to get everything edible out. The monkeys spread the lip gloss and the candy out on the roof and share the tasty treats. A while later, while Jessica continues to work, the monkeys start pounding on the window. She tries to get them to leave by closing her curtains. But, they hang out just beyond that window with her the entire afternoon -every so often coming back to pound on the window some more. They are making a request for the next order of lip gloss and candy that Jessica can’t possibly think to deliver.
I am lucky to have so many animals in my midst here and I will remember to keep my windows closed when I don’t have a watchful eye on the nearest exit and entrance point.
