A Facebook friend from Sri Lanka had been inviting me over for a visit which I've been fobbing off. But he was very insistent and so off I went to the southern- most tip of the emerald isle to his home, the Yala National Park.
Turns out that he was a real rock star. With a name like Def Leopard, what else can he be?
“Welcome Sheroo,” said Def as he looked me up and down walking curiously around me in circles.
“You never saw a tiger before or what?” I asked him smiling.
“Well no...not real tigers. Until quite recently we had a lot of tigers on our island but they were humans!”
For a leopard he seemed to have a weird sense of humour, I thought. Strange though that the island nation is just a stone's throw away from our country and they don't have tigers.
“Leopards rule here, Sheroo,” said Def. “You've come to one of the famous leopard hotspots in the world.” It certainly looked like leopard territory. Open grass lands, dry scrub forests interspersed with rocky out crops; hardly what you'd think geography would be in a green isle.
“Once upon a time this was part of a great Sinhalese kingdom of Ruhuna,” said Def. “When that era ended, wilderness took over. The British colonials who came later converted it to a hunting reserve. In 1938, they declared it a National Park and all its denizens protected species.”
At a safe distance, a young sambar deer scampers to safety at the sight of us.
“I've something different on the menu for you...Wild water buffalo!” he says reading my thoughts.
We climb a little rock cluster from where we have clear view of the plains. I can see a couple of wild buffaloes striking up a conversation with a slightly different looking one.
“Def, why is that one different?” I ask. “Oh, that's a domesticated one. The humans let their cattle in to graze and these guys get together all the time,” he says.
“Who are the other folks who live here?” I ask him as I spot a herd of elephants amidst some tall (what else) elephant grass.
“Besides our elephants, we have wild boar, sloth bear, deer — spotted, sambar and barking, monkeys, mongoose and more,” he says as he leads me to an open-mouthed fellow lying beside a thin stream. “Meet Jagged Jaw, my croc pal!”
“Hello Mr Tiger...Honoured to make your acquaintance,” whispers the croc solemnly his eyes still half closed. He's a mugger, I can see.
“We have salt water crocs too, Sheroo,” says mysterious Mr JJ as if he can read my thoughts.
Def leads me swiftly down a path bordered with large malittan trees on either side. A huge sinister looking owl all brown and fluffed up, stares down at me from above. “It's a Brown fish Owl,” says Def when I ask him who that was. “Looks like he has had a feast at the sea...he eats a lot of small fish and sea creatures besides the usual ‘owly' diet.”
Suddenly I can smell the sea. This being the southeast corner of the isle of Sri Lanka, it's a seaside home for Def Leopard. “What fun you must have Def,” I tell him as we walk along the soft sands.
“Nightmares can happen too,” says Def as he remembers something his mom told him. He recounts it for me: In December 2004, came this huge wave monster they call tsunami which hit this coast. My mom was here then. But you know how we animals can feel it in our bones. Twenty minutes before the wave hit, all the animals had moved well inside, away from the coast line. But some 50 humans who were visiting our park got washed away.”
I'm shocked to silence. Life is not always beautiful, right?
A Children for Nature and Animals Unlimited (CANU) Initiative.
Yala facts
Yala is 300 kilometres south of Colombo. It's the second largest national park in Sri Lanka. The park covering over 900 square kilometres is divided into five blocks. The Ruhuna National park in Block One is home to over 35 leopards.
