Ahmednagar: Since the past two years under lockdown, we have been hearing about a lot of wild animal sightings in human settlements. Another such incident occurred as an injured leopard was found in a school’s canteen in Maharashtra.
The leopard was identified to be an adult male that had sustained injuries and found a secluded hideout for himself in the canteen of a school in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra.
After the big cat was sighted by a villager, a retrieve and preserve team was sent by the forest department officials from the wildlife group Wildlife SOS, who shared the whole rescue operation on their YouTube page.
According to the video’s narration, the animal was awake and moving inside the canteen. The rescue was almost a four hour long operation at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, which is located in Takali Dhokeshwar village.
Describing the rescue operation, the post attached to the video revealed that the forest department and the wildlife group had closed all the entry and exit points and carefully assessed the situation to execute a simple aid and rescue mission.
However, the video showed that it was difficult to locate the leopard as it kept moving with alert across the canteen. Upon confirming the location of the leopard, a hole was made in a kitchen’s steel door from which the team’s vet shot a tranquiliser to the leopard in order to “immobilize it”.
The leopard is “currently under medical care and observation at the Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre in Junnar,” the post read.
Most of the comments on the video just praise and thank the team for their hard work and helping the animal instead of harming it in one go and the comments just show their astonishment for the whole mission.