Kalady is a village located east of the Periyar river, in the Ernakulam district of Kerala, South India.

Newspaper boys and milkmen do not venture out on the street before six in the morning; schoolchildren get back home before sunset; stray dogs are in hiding. Residents in Kalady and nearby areas in Ernakulam district have been in the grip of fear for ten days: a strange wild beast is on the prowl killing and snatching away domestic animals.

Forest officials believe the beast is a leopard straying from the nearby Malayattoor forest. People in Kalady, Melekalady and Kaipattur are scared.

They have sent out SOS to the Chief Minister, Forests Minister and senior government officers. On Thursday, Collector Beena; Chief Conservator of Forests (vigilance) N. Gopinathan, Flying Squad DFO M. Venugopal and Malayattoor DFO Krishnadeva Prasad Sahoo visited Kalady to coordinate the efforts to catch the `leopard’ and allay people’s fears.

A trap has been set up at Manickamangalam Chira and every evening a live goat is put up as bait to woo the beast. Two more traps would be set up soon, Malayattoor forest range officer Sreelekha told The Hindu. A darting expert would arrive soon from the Wayanad forest division soon to catch, if possible, the beast using tranquilizer shots.

K.R. Sekhar, a member of the wildlife health monitoring team at Thekkady, who analysed the pugmarks and droppings of the beast, said he was pretty sure that the beast was a leopard. The way the beast attacked the goats also showed the hunting habits of leopards, he said.

The animal, looking for a decent meal outside the wilderness, stepped out of the Malayattoor forest, some 10 km away, and trekked down along the banks of the Periyar.

Dogs, cats and goats are supposed to be the favourite dish of leopards hunting outside of the forest. Local people have reported that stray dogs have mysteriously vanished from the area. Most of them, they noted, have gone hiding for fear of life. So far, however, only five goats have been snatched away by the beast; the heads of four were left behind and in thefifth’s case, it could chop off only a hind leg.

The leopard strike, while causing extensive alarm among people in the Kalady and nearby areas, has also triggered a kind of mobile phone `leopard news service.’ Most of the leopard sighting messages is, however, hoax. SMS jokes about the leopard are aplenty.

Source.