| In the fine tradition of "animals eating tasty people" news on Rantburg. |
Leopards from a national park on the edge of Bombay, India's largest city, have killed 10 people this month - prompting forest officials to let loose pigs and rabbits to feed the big cats.
| Has anybody thought about... ummm... shooting them? |
The killings are up sharply from previous years, and six of this month's deaths occurred outside the park as leopards extended their range in search of food. Traps are being set up outside the park. A low voltage electric fence will be built to prevent the estimated 30 leopards from leaving Sanjay Gandhi National Park. In the next few weeks, 500 wild boar and 40 deer will be released as leopard prey.
| This would make a good Far Side cartoon: one leopard saying to another, "I keep telling ya, eat another human and they'll give us more food!" |
This month's deaths bring the year's toll to 14, and five other people were mauled. Some 15 deadly leopard attacks were reported last year, and 11 in 2002. Conservationists say some 11,000 squatters live illegally in the park and about 1 million people live in nearby suburbs. "Leopards are not creating the problem, man is," chief forest conservator Prem Yaduvendu told The Associated Press.
| I hesitate to point this out, but man isn't eating the leopards... |
Environmentalist Sunjoy Monga termed the attacks accidental.
| Another Far Side cartoon? "I accidentally ate the tastiest human today..." |
He said poultry and goats grazing on the park's boundaries were the leopards' actual targets.
| "They're incredibly near-sighted, you know." |
"From the marks at the attack sites it is quite clear the leopards are 2- to 3-year-old animals moving in peripheral areas of the park where stray dogs are an abundant source of food supply," Monga said. Before dawn Monday, a leopard dragged an 18-year-old boy from a doorless, tin-roofed hut wedged on a hill bordering the park.
| The lad shouldn't have been barking... |
Relatives said his cries for help roused them, but the leopard had ripped out the boy's throat. In a separate incident, a 52-year-old man was killed Monday by a leopard while sleeping near a Muslim shrine just inside the park.
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