There is one question that authorities of the city zoo are asked nearly everyday since the imminent arrival of a white tiger from the New Delhi Zoological Park was announced. Is it the same creature that mauled a young man to death recently? The question has been frantically put forward right from the ministerial levels to an ordinary visitor of the zoo. The incident at the New Delhi zoo has raised concerns regarding safety and the speed of emergency response in the face of an accident of this sort.
But to those who work closely with the animals, it was never about the viciousness of the said tiger that led to this unfortunate death. “People ask as though the tiger was some sort of man-eater that pounced out of its cage and wrecked havoc. The boy fell in. People threw stones at the creature in an attempt to scare it away. Naturally, it got agitated,” said an official.
The contingent accompanying Salman the jaguar reached New Delhi on Tuesday morning. Malar, the female white tiger the Thiruvananthapuram zoo is receiving, will soon be put into the crate in an air-conditioned truck to head for its new home.
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Firecracker vendors are on the edge. The vendors, who have invested a lot to procure crackers hoping to do good business during Diwali, are keeping their fingers crossed as the last few days of rain had cast a gloom on their business. Anticipating great demand they have already stockpiled the crackers. The vendors say sales during the past two days were not so encouraging.
The intermittent rain and overcast skies have played spoilsport. They hope at least on the day of Diwali the clouds will clear up so that they could notch up a good turnover.
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It was only in recent years that the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) realised the untapped potential of their fleet of buses in generating advertisement revenue. By renting out side and back panels of the bus’s body for advertisement, the corporation could also save on some precious paint. Now, taking a leaf out of KSRTC’s book, some schools in the city have also started using similar space on their school buses for advertisements, only that these are mostly inhouse.
