Every safari brings in a handful of surprises for the visitor at Kabini. Our safari today too, had a twist to it. The morning looked lull and misty, as we rowed through the Kabini river to be welcomed by Spotted deer, Storks and Kingfishers. Suddenly a guest shouted over-riding our guidelines to maintain silence, “Look, something is floating over there!” I peered in and thought it to be a crocodile swimming across the river with a bamboo lump on it. Our boatman, Shivaraj spoke up, ‘Mullhandi!’  Our momentary confusion turned into amazement as we spotted a porcupine in a crocodile’s mouth!

A Porcupine in a Crocodile's mouth!

After we had seen evidences of shattered and strewn spines, we realized that the crocodile indeed had bought a tough meal early morning. Being active during the night, the porcupine would have come for a last gulp of water, and as usual, the ambush expert expected some terrapins or deer for its toast. As we saw the littered spines of the ill-fated spiny mammal all around, we knew that the crocodile nevertheless had fought well to get a firm grip over it.

With a last spooky crunch on the eight to ten kilograms meat ball, the crocodile moved toward the Eucalyptus plantation bund, waiting for the sun to come up, to win the hide and seek game. We noticed that it soon muffled over its prey. Not to disturb the reptile, we quietly moved on; and soon we could hear the alarm calls of Spotted deer and Langurs. The water ways did not permit us to follow the trail; however, we later got to know that our men on jeep got a glimpse of the Prince of the jungle.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under Mammals, Predators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.