In Kerala’s Idukki district, a case of a wild elephant wreaking havoc has come to light. The elephant destroyed a ration shop in an ‘estate’ in the district in the early hours of Friday in search of its favorite food rice. This complaint has been made by the villagers here.
Locals are fondly calling the rowdy elephant as ‘Arikomban’ because of its craze for eating rice (ari), but the elephant has been a headache for the people of Santhanpara area of the district for quite some time now.
In the local language ‘Ari’ means rice and ‘Komban’ means elephant. Wildlife officials, however, said that the ration shop is located on the traditional route of elephants. He said it was yet to be confirmed whether the same elephant had attacked the ration shop.
Shop owner Antony said, the elephant had raided the ration shop located in Pannier Estate four times in the last 10 days, but it completely destroyed the shop on Friday morning. The shopkeeper said that the elephant has been eating rice and other items kept at the ration shop.
He said that anticipating an attack this time, he had shifted all the things in the shop to another room. Antony said that when the elephant could not find anything to eat in the shop, it destroyed the shop.
He said that the elephant often attacks small shops and eats the rice by removing its iron locks. For this, the elephant overturns the shop with its trunk. Antony said that apart from rice, sugar and wheat are also the elephant’s favorite food.
He said that apart from ‘Arikomban’, two other elephants, who are called ‘Chakkakomban’ and ‘Muralivalan’ by the locals, have been attacking shops in the area. Why do elephants attack shops? In response, a villager named Punyavel said that these animals have somehow tasted the rice and they often come in search of it.
Punyavel’s ration shop is located in the Chokkanad estate, which was recently attacked by another elephant. He said that the only solution to this problem is to catch these elephants like ‘Palakkad Elephant-7’, which was wreaking havoc in Palakkad district for two years. Palakkad Elephant-7 was caught last Sunday.
