| It was like any other busy day on the streets of sector five in Ghaziabad, located at the outskirts of India’s capital city, New Delhi. The road was a blur of fast moving cars, buses, and over-loaded trucks, honking their way towards their destinations. In contrast to the busy traffic on the road, were the rickshaw pullers, vegetable and ice-cream vendors, and a few laborers, sitting on the cemented pavement, lazily fanning themselves in the heat.
Blissfully unaware of this entire scene, was a 3 feet long monitor lizard, trying to climb up the wall of a building at the corner of the street. Monitor lizards have powerful claws and can scale most walls effortlessly. It had hardly climbed one foot up the wall when one of the laborers noticed it, and immediately raised an alarm shouting that a very big fat snake-like creature was sliding his way up the wall. Within seconds there was a huge crowd around the monitor lizard, and due to their ignorance, they feared that this creature was sure to be poisonous. After all it had a tongue that flicked in and out like a snake. They started throwing stones at the harmless creature in an attempt to kill it. Luckily, before they could cause too much damage, a man walking down the street noticed the chaos and on realizing what was happening, immediately called up the Wildlife SOS rescue helpline to report the scene.
The Wildlife SOS rescue team member Sanjay, who is used to getting such urgent calls which require immediate action, left within minutes of taking down the address of the spot where the monitor lizard was, fully equipped to catch a lizard of any size or strength. Meanwhile one of the members remained on the phone telling the gentleman how to control the crowd what facts to give the excited mob and how to prevent the monitor getting beaten to death. Sanjay made it as fast as the traffic would allow, and on reaching the place, went straight to get a hold on the lizard, which was injured in a few places and completely terrified, while the kind member of the public Dr. Prabhakar Yadav who had made the call to Wildlife S.O.S. tried to disperse the crowd. Skillfully and effortlessly the team of Sanjay and Dr. Prabhakar Yadav caught the lizard and carefully placed it in a bag. After they had tied the bag shut in such a way that the lizard couldn’t wriggle its way out but also got enough air to breathe, they turned to the crowd and explained to them that monitor lizards are not poisonous creatures and pose no threat to humans, and if a situation as this arises again, they should not take matters into their hands by attacking the animal, but instead call the rescue helpline and leave it to the experts.
Thanks to the concern of one man, Dr. Prabhakar Yadav, the rescue team could save the life of a monitor lizard, which would have otherwise lost its life for no reason, only through fear caused by the ignorance of people. |
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