BENGALURU:Open tanks and sumps are dangerous to children and wildlife. Recently, a team of volunteers with the BBMP Forest Cell was called in to rescue snakes and other reptiles from a 15-foot-deep open and highly polluted sump. It looked like an impossible task, but the team came up with an innovative idea to get the trapped animals out.
They lowered in a temporary ladder, made of dry leaves and sticks, for the reptiles and amphibians to climb out. And the creatures used it to hop and slither out into safety.
“It was in a 2-acre vacant plot on Hesarghatta Road,” says Rajesh Kumar M, one of the volunteers who was at the rescue. “The neighbour noticed movement and looked into the sump and was shocked to see snakes in it”. He immediately called the city corporation’s helpline.
When the volunteers reached the spot, they noticed that the water has been stagnant for long. “Maybe four to five years,” Rajesh estimates. There was garbage of various kinds – plastic wrappers, bottle caps, construction debris and packaging material – and trapped in this wreckage were snakes, skinks, lizards and frogs.
“The water looked toxic,” says Rajesh, “so we could not get in to get them out”. Otherwise the team climbs trees and electric poles, and gone down wells regularly. This time, they lowered buckets and spent 3 to 4 hours getting four snakes, one skink and one toad. “It was a failure till then,” says Rajesh.
Then he and the other rescuer, Adil Arif, came up with the innovative idea – to build a ladder. “Adil now works as a naturalist at Ranthambore National Park,” Rajesh says, “but both of us started out in this city.”
“As soon as it was lowered the creatures started using it to climb out,” says Rajesh. “Almost eleven snakes and few amphibians came out.” The rescuers left the ladder in so that the remaining creatures could find their way out whenever they felt safe enough to do so.
The ladder was made using whatever they found in the vicinity. “We used dry leaves because then the ladder can be left in for longer, wet leaves would have started to decompose,” says Rajesh.
The whole plot is overgrown with weeds and grass.
Rajesh guesses that the creatures may have fallen into the sump while going across it, not realising there was a pit on the way. “Open tanks, borewells and sumps are death traps for these animals,” says Rajesh.
A simple measure of closing it with a lid would have saved them the torturous few hours or days they were trapped in the pit.