The leopard chased the dog into the house and had to rush over the toilet roof to escape the pursuit of the forest officers.
Bollu became one of the famous hybrid dogs in Bilinele village in Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka state, after spending a day and night in the toilet with leopards and came out unharmed while the leopard scurried about. jumped over the roof to escape. The leopard successfully slipped through the trap net and returned to the forest.
Jayalakshmi, the owner of the house, stayed at a relative’s house on the evening of 2/2. The leopard most likely strayed into the house from the nearby Kombaru reserve. Early the next morning, a family member saw the leopard’s tail sticking out through the toilet door. This person immediately locked the door and called the forest protection officers. In a video recorded by onlookers, the leopard curls up in the corner of the room, diagonally opposite Bollu. Each animal seems to have marked its territory in the tight space.
“The leopard may have entered the residential area to chase the dog at night. When it saw the dog hiding in the toilet, the leopard might have followed it,” forest manager Subrahmanya speculated.
The two animals maintained a distance in the 1 X 1.2 m wide room until 13:45 on February 3. During the morning, the foresters put two layers of nets on the asbestos roofing used as the toilet roof. They were allowed to shoot anesthetic arrows at the animals. But they found this to be very risky because the roof was placed above the toilet ceiling and nothing was fixed. The leopard rushed through the hole in the roofing sheet and ran under the net to escape. Authorities said no one in the home was injured. The leopard is less than 5 years old and weighs 80-100 kg.
Leopard (Panthera pardus) is one of 4 big cats of the genus Panthera living in Africa and Asia. They are from 1 to nearly 2 meters long, weighing 30 – 90 kg. Females are usually about 2/3 as small as males. Although smaller than other large cats, leopards are formidable predators. With their camouflage and hiding habits, they can get close to residential areas without being detected. However, habitat destruction and poaching are pushing some leopard subspecies to the brink of extinction.
