17
Salonki understands Teetiri’s plan
Suddenly Salonki understood what
Teetiri’s plan was all about. Teetiri
must have wanted Salonki’s relatives to irritate the strange animal to show
himself. That was the reason why she had wanted them to keep chattering away.
That bobbing fluffy ball, whatever it was, showed that the animal was getting
irritated. There must be an animal at the other end of the fluffy ball. Having
decided that, it became suddenly much more easier for Salonki to look for the
animal.
Salonki’s eyes followed the ball,
bobbing up and down, and could now identify a brown-coloured snake-like cord
attached to it. That must be the tail. She followed the tail through the grass
and suddenly could see the animal very clearly. It was right there, and it was
not there. It could be seen but it was unseen. You could make out the colours,
but if you blinked, the colours were no different than the grassland. It could
not be seen if one looked at the grassland without searching for the animal.
Wow. This animal was very good at camouflage, Salonki thought.
It was the combination of the brown
and green coloured grass that explained it. There simply was no brown grass out
there. It was actually simple, when one understood the colours of the grassland
or the marsh. Brown dry grass could not occur next to dark green grass that was
obviously getting good water through its roots. One patch of grass could not be
brown and not getting water, while the grass nearby was green. The brown grass
was the animal. It was simple, very simple, actually, when you come to think of
it, Salonki told her partner.
It was a brown coloured animal that
was hiding in the grass. So, now we know something more about it, Salonki
thought. It was strange, dangerous, large, frightening, brown in colour, and
with a tail that had a brown or black coloured fluffy ball at the end. Salonki
turned and called out to all her relatives. She pointed out the brown and green
patch of grass and explained that the animal was hiding out there. All her
relatives immediately started arguing about the identity of the animal. For
those who were bolder, they began to move to the lower branches and started
chattering away loudly. All that chatter, the loud arguments, the agreements
and disagreements, soon began to irritate the animal that relied so much on
camouflage. Just as Teetiri had predicted to herself, the animal would have to
show itself in disgust. And indeed, with all the myna chatter going on above
it, suddenly, the animal seemed to shiver all over, and turned its head to
stare right up into the babool tree. Salonki could now see it very clearly.
