Do you know how they do it?

Humans shoot the target animal with a dart which has a medicine which makes them drowsy.

The victim begins to feel woolly –headed, I guess he or she falls to the ground helpless, a little like a fainting fit.

The humans approach, fit in the collar which has a radio transmitter on it.

The radio collar helps them track the animal.

Got an SOS from Ganesha (remember him?) my elephant friend from the Southern parts and I rushed down post haste. What are friends for? He sounded disturbed.

I got to his patch of green or should I say the blue as he resides in the Blue Mountains — the Nilgiris. It was the monsoon season again. I found Ganesha standing in the drizzle near a bamboo thicket. “Good to see you, my friend, what's happening?” I asked as he put his trunk around me in a warm hug.

“I don't want to dampen your spirits, first thing, Sheroo, so tell me all about your beloved Ranthambhore” he said. “But...those are tears I can see Ganesha, tell me what's happening.” I could see his little eyes were streaked with tears and it was definitely not rain.

( Before I go on with this narrative, I want to warn you folks, some of it may not be suitable for those of you who are faint-hearted. So those of delicate constitution, read no further!)

“Well, we've had five of our dear comrades dying in the last two months. Four of them met gory ends with the Resident Evil — the Poacher. All of them had their heads chopped off in the most savage way you can imagine and their tusks were missing,” his voice broke as he went on to tell me that the officials were trying to deny the deaths were due to poaching.

Greedy poachers are after the tusks of the elephant. Only the males have tusks which are really their incisor teeth which keep growing throughout their life.

Being tagged

Humans use ivory to make sculptures, religious figurines, decorative boxes, dagger handles, paper knifes and even piano keys. Even though the CITES (Convention on the International Trade on Endangered Species) has banned ivory trade, it goes on in both Africa and Asia, the homes of the elephant population in the world. “As long as the people continue to buy ivory products, we elephants have to live in the shadow of a brutal death,” says Ganesha.

“Maybe those who buy them are not even aware of the bloody history behind it,” I say, for I still want to believe there are good folks in the world.

“May be..” says Ganesha. “But humans just won't leave us alone. Just a couple of weeks ago, they began to radio-collar some elephants they consider a ‘problem'. These guys are constantly in trouble often raiding the crops of the farms in the edge of our forests. A female elephant was radio collared first but two days later a young tusker was killed in the process.”

“This radio–collaring, I've heard of. The humans radio collar just about anybody — elephants, tigers, bears, whales and turtles even! They do it to study us or so I've heard,” I tell him but don't mention the story of a tiger in the swamp land of Sunderbans. He too was fitted with a collar which stopped working after a while and started choking him so much that he couldn't eat. Last heard he was taken to a nearby Alipore zoo. Wonder if he'll get back to his home again.

Back to Ganesha's story: This unfortunate elephant after being hit with a tranquiliser dart tried to flee into the forest in fright and fell down a gorge and died. Was it the fall or was the fainting medicine too much for him, we'll never know. For like dead men, dead animals don't tell any tales.

That evening we pay our respects at the grave of the deceased jumbo along with his entire clan, I could see many weeping faces. Haathi mera Saathi, says your government.