Birds in the Pallikaranai marshland are facing a new form of threat — stray dogs.
Naturalists say a pack of about 10 stray dogs frequently enter the marshland and devour the birds found among the reeds. Environment specialists are aghast to understand this behaviour of stray dogs to wade through water and hunt in groups! If this continues, very soon Palnikaranai marsh land will no longer attract migratory birds and the nature will stand destroyed.
A few months back, stray dogs in groups had hunted a Deer and made a feast right in the back yard of the Governor's bungalow in Guindy! There are news about the stray dogs attacking the Peacock, our National Bird right within the Governor's campus and elsewhere in the state. These dogs turn into hunters and once taste the meat of Deers and peacocks, will eventually start attacking humans in the coming days? There was a news item recently about a boy playing cricket with his friends going to pick the ball from the waste dump yard in Perungudi, being attacked by dog looking animals which eventually turned out to be the dreaded Jackals! Luckily, hearing the loud cries of the boy, his friends came to his rescue with the cricket bats and other accessories and rescued the boy from being butchered by the Jackals! The civic authorities should act now and adopt a program by which they eradicate all the stray animals loitering on the streets and enforce a strict law of enrolling the pets and collect a fee so as to fund the program by itself.
similarly, the much prestigious Old Mahabalipuram Road to connect the IT hub was inaugurated with such fanfare a few years back only to see all kinds of cattle freely roaming on the road and even blocking the roads right in the centre despite the government collecting a toll tax for using the express way!!
The Besant Nagar beach better known as Elliot's Beach is no better when you talk about these stray dogs and beggars making your life miserable! The stray dogs numbering a few hundreds all over the beach keep Cris-crossing the beach walkers and berth themselves on the granite platform meant for seating the beach goers and specially the elders! There is no guarantee that you will find a neat and clean place to sit as suddenly you will find a stray, infected dog sitting next to you? I have personally had the experience of sitting on the platform, facing east and doing breathing exercise while closing my eyes... and when i open my eyes after deep inhaling and breathing for about 10 minutes, I find a Beggar right in front of my face, imposing that sends shivers across my body as I did not intend to see the beggar but the rising Sun!! The entire process of healing your body with meditation and breathing gets off the road with such incidents happening on a daily basis!
I visited Dubai recently and stayed there for about 10 days with my son and daughter-in-law. I was awestruck to note the development the state had made in the last 20 years! The Emirates claim that there was only one tall rise building in the year 1991 and stands at 999 buildings as of date!! This is what you term as development. The roads that have been built right across the desert is worth all praises. The power produced through Thermal process is amazing and the drinking water supplied is by desalination plants. The milk is being imported from Saudi and for that matter all the food stuff and other materials are imported from countries all over the globe! Dubai is only a trading centre and not an oil producing state to have advanced and developed in such a fast manner! Amongst the best of best things, you really can not find any stray dog or even a camel for that matter! The time of my visit coincided with Eid. I did not see any butchery or goats hanging out of trucks or from the back of a 2 wheeler! No signs of any killing or blood could be seen and everything was at peace and absolute tranquil.
Our country must have a uniform system for allowing pets and other cattle which must be monitored strictly and carry out mercy killing of stray animals in order to save humanity which is at peril looking at the way the dogs are evolving into flesh/meat eaters?
The civic authority should de-recognise any body that supports these stray animals and stop their activities terming it as anti-human. Let us wake up and not allow these pet animals from becoming meat eaters and eventually man-eaters!!??
