A Day For The OddBall

 Years ago, while I was volunteering for a wildlife rescue centre, we received a call.  Right on a busy road in the north of Bangalore, a friend of ours – an amateur wildlife enthusiast - was speaking to a man who stood with an odd looking animal that he was looking to sell.  It had been captured from an agriculture field, tied up and then sold to this man.

“Should I buy this?” the friend wondered, as he described this animal that he could not recognise (these were pre-Whatsapp days, so people described things).  Was buying wildlife to save it ethical, he added?  It is a question that I still do not have an answer to, other than to be a quintessential economist and say, “It depends….” 

As he described the animal, my pulse rate quickened.  I had never seen a pangolin before, but a photograph in Sanctuary was enough to make me fall in love with this Master Oddity, an evolutionary quirk with an amalgam of features borrowed from a plethora of species that is as endearing as it is, well, different.  Once upon a time, Brittania had a delicious little round biscuit called Britta, which was – this is a secret, so keep it to the 1.7 billion folks on Facebook and don’t spread it around – made from the leftover dough from all other biscuits that they made.

Pangolin is Nature’s Britta, with large scales of keratin, no teeth, an odd looking snout that suggests a penchant for tunnelling, a long sticky tongue and a decided appetite for ants and termites: one pangolin can knock off 70 million in a year (Yes, somebody spent his life counting this. Does he need career guidance?). 

I took a quick decision.  “Say that you have just spoken to your cousin who is a cop and is on his way here.” I have an old Gypsy, so it is a ruse that works sometimes… “make him give it to you for free or, at least, haggle till we reach.”  

When we reached, the man had vanished, but our friend was holding gingerly on to the pangolin. It was a large one, the snout was soft, delicate and beautiful and the eyes melted the heart (we are suckers for these things). And the good news was that it seemed to be unharmed. 

At the rescue centre, where it was put into an enclosure for a hour’s observation, it got to work right away, dug a hole and entrenched itself with such firmness that it took two folks to pull it out to be released in the wild.   

So, why is Feb 19^th World Pangolin Day?

It is world’s most trafficked animal, captured and killed in ghastly ways to feed the fake medicines racket, ridiculous beliefs that its body parts – the scales in particular - could cure illnesses.  One statistic: in the four years between 2016 and 2019, the scales that were confiscated = 360,000 pangolins.  

Ogden Nash – who better? – ends The Pangolin Appendix, with this…

They're sought after because they are edible

But save them 'cuz they're pangolincredible!