Gaurs are cool

I have decided Gaurs are also harmless. This is my official position. Gaurs are the Indian bison that visit us almost daily. It has seemed odd to me — and a bit Indian if I may say so — that the bison here are supposed to be dangerous, that all the residents here need to be aware of them and go inside or go the other direction when they see them, yet the security guards here scare them off with rocks and vocalizations. What makes the security guards — unarmed mind you — able to deal with them and we the people can’t? I say nothing. I say it’s a scam. I say it is something to make the security guards feel important and have something to do in their day.

I may be wrong.

But today was not unlike any other day. Here they were, grazing in my front yard. An entire herd of them.

A woman standing behind me made vocalizations at them which startled me, which caused me to stop the video.

Then there was one close by eating a snack, and this woman continued this vocalization without a fear in the world. And its obvious she’s lived around them for quite some time.

Sheela, our aya, who is quite nervous when she sees them, proceeded to throw vegetable scrappings at it. I took some pretty good shots with my camera. This animal was so not intimidated, so not intimidating, so cattle-like in its behavior, as many appear to be, that this fear of them I have concluded is unwarranted. So they’re fast, so a few have charged humans. The beast was probably provoked.

Afterwards back inside, I heard security in my yard. I opened the door. “Bison, sir,” said one. I responded with, “It’s okay!” The guard looked at me with hesitation, like he knew it was, but didn’t want to show it.

The Gaur in this picture is pretty big, but they can get a lot bigger. They can get to be the size of a small elephant, it seems.

Apparently Gaurs were never in these parts. They moved further down the mountain when their ecosystem was ruined by careless human beings further up the mountain. And these animals are healthy, unlike their city-dwelling cattle counterparts. These animals eat and eat well. No dumpster diving here.

I say Gaurs deserve to be the subject of a poem. And I am going to write it. In the meantime, mentioning elephants in this post (even if just briefly when describing size) and mentioning ecosystem destruction (which makes me think of extinction) both remind me of a poem I wrote about what it would be like for the last living elephant to exist. And so I leave you with “Future’s Place” — I hope you like it.