That'sa Lotta Bull!

Finally I have some pictures of the Brahma Bulls. Suddenly the other day they were everywhere. It seems people in Pondy only paint the horns for Pongal, not the rest of the body. All cows are sacred to Hindus and must not be killed or injured. Some are actually butchered for meat but this is done by the Muslim population. The Brahmas are the most interesting and attractive cows to me. They have lovely pale taupe-colored skin, or medium brown, or almost white, or really dark chocolate, and such sweet faces with those big liquid raisin eyes. Their horns are very long - some grow to lean toward each other almost like an elongated heart, some face outward more like a goat, and some hook back. They endlessly pull carts along the road and plows through the rice fields - eventually getting a nice bath in the river. They are an amazingly bony lot - especially from behind. You could use their pelvic bones to open letters with.





That rein through the nose thing doesn't look terrible comfy does it! No wonder they are so docile!


Other cows...



Demons and Scarecrows

Demon faces (to ward off bad spirits) are put in some creative places if there is no veranda on a building (a typical place for a demon head).



How about on the garage door?





Scarecrows are usually used in the rice fields. But sometimes there's a need to keep crow effluent off the balconies of nice new buildings-in-progress. Note that the demon head is already in place one balcony above the scarecrow.





Lakshmi has made some cute sounds the last couple of times I’ve visited her. She has her moods and doesn’t like being overwhelmed. A week before the Pongal festival there were lots of us lined up with coins, sweet grass and bananas to offer her. She got going too fast and started taking things from each person or family in an assembly line but then forgetting who to bonk with her trunk for the blessing. Her ears started flapping and she let out a little frustrated shriek to slow things down. When I say little and shriek, it was little for an elephant and very fast. It’s just amazing how much noise they can make. Definitely got our attention. We also went over on the third day of Pongal. Pieces of sugar cane are a popular snack here and a group of guys brought her four. Next to bananas (which are miniature here) she reaaaallly likes the sugarcane. She happily chomped down one and held onto the other three pieces with a death grip while still managing to accept coins and bonk until she could chomp down on the cane. After awhile she kept on with her duties but emanated a low continuous rumble while doing them. I’m assuming that was a satisfied snack sound as it wasn’t coming from her stomach. Amazing to me is how she takes the coins with the tip of her prehensile trunk finger and sucks them right in. The deal usually is that for folding money or coins she flips the end of her trunk over so you can set them on the grooved part of the underside – then she moves the trunk over to the mahout and he takes it from her. Now we know that if she’s on a roll she stores all the coins up in her trunk and after awhile you can hear them rattling around in there – a very unexpected sound. When she finally offloads them, she seems to clear the palate by giving out a huge snoof of fine spray from her trunk. DH has been baptized upon occasion. The stick the mahout uses in telling her to do things is basically a long twig. It just basically gets her attention and he speaks any commands to her. After all, what kind of stick would impress an elephant? A baseball bat? In the wild they rip up trees for breakfast without breaking stride!



You can just barely see her hanging on to cut pieces of sugar cane in the next picture. Looks happy, doesn't she?



And here is where you get the cane at the local market. It's very tall and the cane man cuts it down to size for you when you purchase it.





To close, meet my newest tortoise friend...