That Time I Was Hunted by Feral Dogs

The encounter literally almost made me sh*t my pants.

During the summer of 2009, I was the darkest I’d ever been and I couldn’t have been happier about it. I spent the majority of that summer outside, working on my PhD dissertation. My complexion was so gorgeously Black that I wish I had stayed that dark forever.

That summer was also the closest I have ever come to being eaten by animal relatives.

I conducted my dissertation research in Rajasthan, India; one of the largest states in the country located in the northwest part of the subcontinent bordering Pakistan. The majority of Rajasthan sits in the Thar Desert, an arid region where temperatures can reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit during the day.

Despite the harsh environmental conditions however, the Thar desert is teaming with human and non-human life. Wildlife species like antelope, wolves, tigers struggle to coexist with intensifying agriculture and a growing livestock populations than the human population. Sacred cattle, buffalo, camels, sheep and goats compete with Blue bull antelope, blackbuck antelope, and chinkara populations for foliage amidst yearly droughts of varying intensities.

I chose to conduct my dissertation research in this region because my grad advisor suggested I look into the story of the Bishnoi people. I mentioned to him that I wanted to study human/wildlife conflict, and it just so happened that he had recently come back from Rajasthan. While there, my advisor was working on a project involving wildlife survival during drought in human managed reserves vs. areas where humans were not directly managing the landscape. He had worked with local experts and heard an incredible story about a specific caste of people and their long history of environmental protection.

The Bishnoi people’s cultural foundations were developed in the late 15th century by Jambeshwar, a young man attempting to figure out how to better survive drought conditions in the region. He determined that the best course of action for him and his people was to protect non-human species as though human life depended on it. He was right of course, and subsequently developed twenty-nine (“Bis” = 20, “noi” = 9) principles for his people to live by. Among these principles was the protection of all living species even and especially at the cost of the human protector’s life.

In 1730, this ethic was put to the test when the Maharaja sent his men to village where Jambuji, the founder of the Bishnoi’s established their cultural foundations. This was the same village where, centuries later, I would call home and conduct my research. The men the Maharaja sent had orders to chop down Khejeri trees (Prosopis cineraria) to use for renovations to the palace in the capital of Jodhpur.

A Bishnoi woman by the name of Amrita Devi saw the men approaching with axes and ran out to protect her relatives, imploring the men to spare the trees. They refused, and so Amrita hugged the Khejeri tree in a last ditch effort to stop the harvest.

The men cut through Amrita’s body, killing her.

Amrita’s daughters, witness to their mother’s brutal murder, followed her example, each hugging a sacred tree, and each being killed in the same fashion.

For much of humanities history, the only leverage the underclass has ever had to move power structures is the sacrifice of their own lives as protest. And so it wasn’t until 360+ Bishnoi men, women, and even children, committed suicide for each and every tree that was harvested, before the Maharaja ceased the taking of Khejeri trees from the village.

Fast forward two and a half centuries and we find famed Bollywood actor Salman Khan running for his life after being caught poaching blackbuck antelope in this same village. By the late 20th century Bishnoi political power had grown considerably, to the point where killing animal relatives in their presence was met with swift and severe extrajudicial violence.

I met a hunter who was not as lucky as Khan, who had been caught poaching. In an awkward moment shortly after meeting him, he stood up and began to disrobe in front of me, eagerly showing me the fresh and savage bruises that covered his body. They had caught this man, beaten him, and sent a final message on his hand. He raised his left hand and I gasped staring at sickening right angle his pinky finger made at the middle knuckle.

This wasn’t the 18th century. You fuck around and the Bishnoi will help you find out.

And so even though Salman escaped local justice, he did not escape the legal system. Khan was convicted of poaching and sentenced to 5 years in prison for his crimes, largely driven by the political power Bishnoi had worded centuries to leverage. Khan spent only a few days in jail, through the familiar cure all for accountability, money and fame.

***

Even though Rajubai, my field guild, didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Hindi, he was able to make it clear that I needed to be prepared for the feral dogs I might encounter on this survey.

“Jonathan-bai (-bai means brother)!” Raju picks up a rock and pantomimes throwing it. “Kutah (dog)”.

“Ah! Yes. I will Rajubai.”

Normally, Raju accompanied me on the Khejeri tree surveys I conducted in each village, but a few weeks before I came for my second field season, he had suffered a nasty farming equipment injury. Despite the gash in his left foot, he still accompanied me to each village to make sure that if any people wondered who this huge Black man wondering around farm fields was, he could explain to then what I was doing.

Off I went to count Khejeri trees, eager to be done before the day got too hot. Within seconds I had put the possibility of being attacked by feral dogs out of my mind.

***

The ecology of rural Rajasthan had changed dramatically since the late 1980s. During the same time, in North America, the California condor had reached its population nadir due to lead poisoning, the three primary vulture species in India — the Indian, white-backed, and slender billed vultures — were rapidly declining across the subcontinent.

In both cases, human introduction of toxins were the culprit. Hunting wildlife in India without permission from the government (a permission they almost never granted) had been banned since 1978, so rather than lead killing vultures in India, a veterinary drug by the name of diclofenac, was killing vultures by the thousands.

Diclofenac is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID like Ibuprofen) widely used by rural human populations. It’s often the only medicine folks can afford, and thus is given to domesticated animals any time they show any symptoms of sickness. Snake bite, headache, infection, or fatigue all got treated with the only drug rural populations had or could afford to administer.

In the previous decade before I started my research, Rajasthan had experienced several especially severe droughts, and was in the midst of one in 2009. Droughts kill and for domesticated animals living under the care of humans, death rates increase during these times.

Normally, increased death rates of large animals is a boon for scavenging animals like vultures, but with widespread use of diclofenac, the increase in available food due to drought meant an increased rate of exposure to diclofenac. 

So much more food and much of it poison.

Diclofenac cannot be metabolized by the dominant vulture species in India. Some quirk of avian evolution in the Gyps genus leaves them unable to break down the drug once ingested. So, when one of these vultures eats carrion laced with diclofenac they suffer kidney failure. Uric acid crystals then begin to build up in the body (visceral gout) and the vulture is essentially stabbed to death from the inside by the crystals building up in their body. It’s an awful way to die.

Most of the human population in India is Hindu, so in addition to not eating their cattle, most people never eat any of the livestock they keep. For centuries, large populations of livestock among a mostly vegetarian human population wasn’t a problem because vulture populations thrived on the animals humans refused to eat. The incredibly efficient flesh gourmands were happy to take up the slack, greedily picking carcasses to the bone. This arrangement worked so well that the largest populations of vultures in the world were once found in India.

This system was so important that humans populations created an entire social class to facilitate this relationship. Dead livestock were taken away from residential areas to designated dumping grounds in every village and outside of every major city. The vultures did what vultures do, cleaning to the bone like your great aunt gets down on some chicken wings.

But vulture populations began to noticeably decline shortly after the introduction of diclofenac, and by the turn of the century, more than 90% of vulture populations in India were gone.

So who was eating all these dead livestock?

***

I was lost and I knew it. My sense of direction comes and goes at the worst times, and I just couldn’t find my next heading. As I wondered around like a disoriented sack of meat in the basin of the village dumping ground, Raju’s words about staying vigilant for feral dogs came back to me. I quickly looked around, but only saw dead bodies; nothing moving. I needed to get to higher ground to check my bearings. I’d be fine if I could just get to higher ground.

When I got to top of the hill overlooking the dumping ground, I found that I had indeed been on the right path. I marked my starting point on the GPS and began to walk back down the hill.

And then I froze because what I saw made my blood run cold.

Sniffing around in the exact same spot I had been standing 3 minutes ago was the biggest feral dog I had ever seen. Her swollen teats hung down as she raised her head to look at me.

She had mouths to feed.

I could see that she herself was hungry.

And I was completely alone.

I hadn’t seen a single person during the previous 2 hours of surveying other parts of the village, and so I picked up a rock and ran down the hill straight for her shouting as I went. It worked! She ran into the bushes and I continued on my survey line, trying to pretend that nothing more would come from that small confrontation.

About 5 minutes later I looked back behind me to confirm my victory, only to find her following my every footstep.

I wanted to run, but that would have only guaranteed an attack. So I turned back around and continued walking, trying harder to fake a confidence that declined with each step.

Dogs can smell fear, right?

Then she made a sound that, still to this day, I’ve never heard a dog make. It was a sort of low growl, whine, chortle like sound. It seemed clear that the sound was not for me, but neverthelessI listened with my back still turned for the shuffle of running feet that would signal an attack. Nothing but the echo of the sound — remembering it still gives me the heebeegeebees — was in my ears.

When I turned around again, no longer being able to pretend I was unconcerned about my safety, I saw two other dogs flanking the leading female; all staring at me hungrily as they cautiously shortened the distance between us.

FUCK!

The rock I’d been holding flew from my hand. For some reason I deliberately aimed to miss them, hoping my threat of violence in the face of their clear intent to cause violence would drive them off. Dafuq was I thinking?! These dogs weren’t playing games.

It didn’t work.

The rock fell short of the lead female and all three stood still and simply waited for me to make my next move.

Coincidentally I decided right then and there that I was done with that particular survey transect line and I counted the remaining Khejeri trees I could see, and left the dumping ground at a brisk walk. I had to scream at my body not to run and to continue to pretend that I wasn’t worried about the three large dogs who could easily overpower and kill me.

Somehow that worked. When I felt far enough away, I only barely managed get my pants down in time for a mountain of shit and fear leave my body.

I let it all go…and possibly a few tears of relief as well.

The dogs didn’t follow me and I still don’t know why. Animals are only more vulnerable to predation while defecating than they are when asleep or copulating. I was still an easy target and no one was going to come my rescue. I’m grateful for their mercy. I hope they ate well that day.

The only other person I saw that entire day in the field was Raju when I left for my survey, and Raju when I returned from my survey. When I walked up, he was smoking a bidi (local cigarette) leaning on our field vehicle, a Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle, the epitome of Rajasthani masculinity. I never saw dogs mess with Raju. They knew to leave him alone.

“Good, Jonathan-bai?” I think he could see that I was shaken.

“Good Raju-bai” I said, never more glad to see him.

“Go to back to Khejeri [village]?”

“Yes, please”.

I never told Raju about what happened and I’d never get the chance to tell him this story directly. Three years later, he died from health complications from diabetes. He teachings, not just on that day, but throughout my dissertation, kept me safe during my work. When I was kicked out of a Bishnoi ceremony in Khejerli village by some young hotheads looking to boss around the foreigner and Raju heard about it, I had to physically restrain him from “talking to” the young men who demanded I leave. Raju made my work and the life I live now possible and I will forever be in debt to his wisdom, kindness, and courage.

***

If a human being is going to die from rabies, chances are it’s going to happen in India. They will likely be an economically oppressed rural resident who was bitten by a feral dog in or around a village. They won’t have access to a rabies vaccine and very likely the powers that be will not be aware of their death. Not because those in power don’t care, but because the problem of feral dogs is a massive human-induced ecological disaster with no easy fix.

The answer to the question of who filled the niche vacated by declining populations of vultures is feral dogs. With virtually no vultures around to eat all the carrion left by human populations, feral dog populations exploded.

Vulture populations in India appear to be recovering, but the damage to ecosystem function may be irreparable. Scavenging raptor populations will likely never be what they once were because now feral dogs have the numbers to defend food territories where once they were outnumbered.

Humans have altered this landscape in profound ways, ushering in suffering and unnecessary death for many in the name of profit and material wealth for the few.

Rural Rajasthan is one of my very favorite places on this planet. The people are incredible, the non-human relatives spectacular and numerous, and the landscapes breathtaking.

But Some advice in case you decide to go for a stroll alone in the village, even for science, DON’T.

Or if you must, carry some rocks and wear your brown pants.

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-Jonathan