In no time, Huwaa has grown into a little beauty of nearly 10 months of age, while her little brothers completed four months in this world. Temporarily named Alpha and Beta, the pair caused considerable amount of mischief to mom Cathay. Being the more daring of the two, Alpha often leads in such joyful jumps over either Mom or his sibling Beta, much to the visible annoyance of both.
But even their combined energy cant not compete with that of Huwaa. For the past few months King Henry has indulged her whims with good manners and huge amount of patience and has gone as far as playing happily with her. Our experiment of putting a tiger cub with an unrelated adult male has proven to be a another complete success, yet again much contrary to the traditional zoo wisdom. But perhaps King Henry enjoyed the company of Huwaa because he had been used to the company of his sister Princess until fairly recently? But TigerWoods has also shown tolerance of Huwaa’s presence, putting up with her if necessary, albeit preferring his own solitary state of sleeping and eating. The only one who was nasty to Huwaa was Madonna, but we forgive her. After all, she was pregnant with her own babies at that time and had no intention of adopting her love rival’s daughter!
Perhaps the novelty value of Huwaa is wearing down, since King Henry doesn’t respond to Huwaa’s antics as much as before. Still my goal has been achieved: Huwaa and KH have formed a good bond which would make their potential future breeding easier; and KH would also be able to show Huwaa a trick or two hunting techniques.
Another hunting coach is of course Huwaa’s mom Cathay. Over the past four months, we continued to let Huwaa interact with Cathay from time to time even though she has been rearing her newborns. It was clear that if Huwaa had a choice, she would have torn through the fence and making her little brothers her toys. In her eyes, her little brothers are so cute and playable. That was also the reason why her presence was banned from them for fear of her endangering their safety.
Now the little boys are mobile and sturdy, and at the same age as JenB and Coco when they were united with their big brother Hulooo, we let Huwaa meet them in person.
Huwaa was overjoyed, running towards them asa she was let in their Grass camp. The little boys were also pleasantly surprised, as they had been looking up to their little big sis for as long as they could remember. Cathay, having found a good baby sitter in her daughter, promptly left the three of them and went patrolling the fence, throwing a few deafening roars at Hulooo to warn him off her young ones. Poor Hulooo -all he probably wanted was to join in and be a child again. He bore no malice towards the little half-siblings. But mom Cathay doesn’t think so!
For the next hour or so, it was just the most wonderful scene one can ever witness, watching three little tigers chasing one another & ambushing one another with boundless energy and great gusto. Alpha proves yet once more that he will be the leader of the two, probably for a while, as he occasionally unleased sounds the loudness of which doesn’t seem to fit such a little body. He even followed Huwaa into adjacent camp to “terrorize” her, when it was time to let her retire for the night with KH. Mom Cathay returned from her showdown with Hulooo after sunset, thanked Huwaa with warm chuffs for looking after her brothers, and dragged reluctant Beta away from the fence to settle into the darkness of the night.
Another successful experiment that is going to do a lot of good for Huwaa and her family...
No comments:
Post a Comment