Andhra Vet Risks Life to Save 300+ Wild Animals, Shows True Humanity!

From snakes, monkeys, mouse-deer, and leopards, he has tended to an army of animals in the past decade.

32 years ago, in the Visakha agency area, Visakhapatnam district, a coffee merchant and a humble homemaker bore a son, and decided to name him Phaneendra. A name that finds its roots in Indian mythology and means the ‘king of serpents’ or ‘snakes.’ Yet, unlike his name, growing up, Phaneendra was terrified of snakes. At 32, Phaneendra, who graduated from the NTR Veterinary College Gannavaram as a veterinarian, has rescued and rehabilitated more than 300 stray and distressed wildlife animals!

From snakes, monkeys, mouse-deer, and leopards, he has tended to an army of animals in the past decade.

Phaneendra works with the State Animal Husbandry Department as a field veterinarian, but his work goes much beyond his call of duty.

When he isn’t tending to distressed animals at his clinic, ‘Paws N Claws’ in Rajahmundry, the veterinarian,who also serves as a Wildlife Veterinary Consultant, attends rescue calls from the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department and people who call him at all times.

In addition to rescuing, he also nurses stray wildlife to health and ensures their safe release into the wild.

The Better India (TBI) got in touch with Phaneendra to get a glimpse of his journey.

Stepping into the world of animal rescue

“My earliest memories of love blooming for animals and birds is from when I was as young as six years old. It was a tradition in our household to raise our poultry, but it broke my heart when my family sacrificed it for consumption. I remember putting up with a fight with my parents, to convince them that if they wanted, they could get meat or fish from the market, but I wouldn’t let them raise poultry for food.”

As he grew up and observed his siblings opt for conventional professions like engineering, he felt an incredible pull toward working for animal welfare.

After five years of hard work, when he got into the veterinary field, a realisation dawned upon him.

Phaneendra’s first rescue that continues to remain close to his heart is that of a baby monkey. When he was working out at the local gym, he heard some commotion going on outside. When he checked out, he saw that a baby monkey had strayed from its group. In distress and in search of food, it was running into shops and homes.

“When I saw people bullying the baby monkey and throwing stones at it, my heart twinged in pain. I remember looking at the monkey in the eye and feeling its distress. I yelled at people to leave it alone. When I offered him a banana, the monkey – who was breathing heavily – settled in my lap and fell asleep. This was the turning point of my life,” reminisces Phaneendra.

He later brought the animal to his clinic and fostered it for a week. It soon had a new name, Pandu. Extremely naughty, Pandu couldn’t be left alone. So he travelled with Phaneendra everywhere he went. But the vet knew, he couldn’t get attached. The baby belonged to the wild.

“I tried taking him to the spot where I found him, but every time I returned, he would be eagerly waiting for me. So after a few days, when I had given him the rabies vaccine, I took him to a nearby park where a group of monkeys were living on a tree. I brought lots of bananas. So when the pack came down to take the bananas and returned, Pandu followed too.”

One of his most daring rescues was that of a leopard in the Godavari Delta Area in February 2019

 

The leopard, deemed a man-eater by the media, had attacked four people before climbing onto a 90-feet high coconut tree.

Phaneendra, who was in Vijayawada at the time, immediately left for the rescue spot after receiving a call from his Divisional Forest Officer.

The plan was laid out. The only way to capture the animal and rescue it, was tranquilising it. A non-lethal air gun, often used for incapacitating the target animal, temporarily impairs the animal’s physical functions. The use of tranquiliser guns has a long history of risking serious injuries to both the person capturing the animal and the target as well.

And therefore this is a special skill that can only be performed by certified-wildlife veterinarians.

Under regular circumstances, this would be done by a tranquilising expert from the rescue team of the Vizag zoo. But since the man had gone for higher studies to the US, the role of tranquilising the leopard became Phaneendra’s.

From pythons to larger predators, Phaneendra rescues all wild animals

Phaneendra and his team did not sleep a wink.

On 14 February, he was notified that the leopard, after escaping a coconut plantation, had entered into a thatched hut.

Everyone from the Vizag rescue team, forest department authorities, an animal ambulance, CRPF, local MLAs and DSP were at the spot. This time, the team was at a better footing to react to any situation at hand.

The only way the animal could be tranquilised was for Phaneendra to climb the makeshift roof covered by coconut palms, dig a small hole through it and dart the animal sitting in the mezzanine attic.

“My focus was to save that leopard. At 5.30 pm when I tried to dart it the first time, it was so alert that it not only dodged it but almost attacked me. We slipped off the roof into the heavy net enclosure traps and sustained scratches. Mine was a close shave to death. One wrong step and it would have leapt and torn me apart. My family begged me to abandon the rescue. But I didn’t,” recalls Phaneendra.

At 11:30 PM when he tried for the second time, he was able to dart it from a distance of 10 feet. The 20-hour rescue operation was a success. The leopard was transported to the Vizag zoo the same night and released into the wild two and a half months later.

2018 was also the year when the young vet shot to fame for rescuing 15 python eggs from a village, 7 km from Rajahmundry.

“Had I reached five minutes late, one of the bystanders would have crushed the head of the mother python under his boot. I rushed to the spot and put the 15-feet-long python and its eggs in the trunk of my car. Taking it to the forest academy, I put the python in a drum. The next day she had escaped. I couldn’t abandon the eggs. So I decided to artificially hatch them in an incubator at my clinic. I took the advice of senior vet friends abroad.”

In artificial hatching, it is crucial to maintain the ambient temperature and humidity, since it defines the sex of the babies. In his very first attempt, Phaneendra was able to attain rare success, where eight males and seven females were born. He will soon be presenting a paper on this at a national wildlife veterinarians conference.

All those who have witnessed Phaneendra’s work first hand, hold him in high regard.