ALAPPUZHA: Pattanakkad resident Thambi Narayanan, 55, has been running a tailoring shop near the national highway for decades. Interestingly, he is not known as a tailor but an animal lover who has dedicated his life to saving animals, birds and reptiles that get trapped in human habitation, creating distress for both people and fauna.
Along with his son Sreejith T, who is an MBA graduate, Thambi rescues snakes, iguanas, pangolins, mongooses, civets, and barn owls.
“For more than 20 years, I have been catching snakes and other animals from houses and residential areas in Alappuzha district,” Thambi says.
Recalling how he began rescuing animals, he says: “Once I saw people beating a cobra when it had crawled into a house. In a single beat, its vertebra was broken and it was unable to move. Its pain and struggle created sympathy in me.”
So, he caught snakes using a long stick and let them out in uninhabited areas. Later, he began handing them over to the forest department.
“I started catching snakes because the waterlogged areas in and around us are safe havens for snakes. When heat increases, they enter houses and other structures,” Thambi points out.
In another incident that struck him, he saw a mongoose and a snake fighting near his village. “I rescued both the mongoose and the snake. With that, I realised that catching wild animals is not an easy task. A the same time, mongooses are human-friendly and can be tamed easily,” he says.
Thambi’s son started supporting him while studying in Class 10. He too is passionate about animals.
“Three years ago, I acquired a licence from the forest department for snake-catching after the requisite training. Now I catch an average of 10 to 15 snakes and other animals every week. We keep them in our house. And every Saturday, forest department officials come to my house and later free the rescued animals in the forests,” Thambi says.
Two weeks ago, he caught a python from a plot near his house. He also spotted around 50 python eggs. He handed over the python to the forest department officials but kept the eggs in a bucket, covered with a blanket. Last week, ten of them hatched and he duly handed over the baby pythons to the department. Of the remaining eggs, five more have hatched and they will be handed over to the department on Saturday.
“This was the first time that I found the eggs of a snake. Out of curiosity, I kept them in a bucket for incubation and it had the desired result,” Thambi says.
