Imagine waking up on a fine morning and opening the doors of your home just to see some random strangers dump your front yard and home with waste papers, plastics and some rubbish things. Would you be silent and just watch and accept the way it is?

Doesn’t this scenario evoke outrage within us and yet we do the same to our fellow species in the name of eco tourism.

On a warm morning, I travelled through the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, a place known for its rich diversity of flora and fauna and forms an important part of the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve.

It was divine watching different forms of wildlife in their own habitat. It reminded me of how humans have got captivated into the technological world and here are animals who peacefully live in their habitat until we go and disturb them.

Suddenly I saw something that disturbed me so much that I wanted to write this post.

It is a great place to spot the spotted deers. We could see a lot of them along the road side. Peacocks and peahens on the other side are busy with their search for food.

The giant elephants also could be found sometimes in the herd or sometime alone depending on the day’s fortune.

There are a lot of Monkeys and Langurs who cling to the branches and also sit on the sides of the road.

What made me worry was a Monkey sitting on the branch of a tree trying to find food from a plastic cover and finding nothing in it, it started eating the plastic cover.

Our nature is so incredible that it has food webs designed in a complex way that there is a way for every species to find food that exists in nature.

Monkeys being in the wild are also meant to be the same way. But people who feed animals in these forests  don’t understand how it threatens their life.

As a resident near the forest’s outskirts, I have witnessed many instances of monkeys and other wild animals falling victims to road accidents and most importantly they come to the roads seeking food and the tourists also provide them with packed junks with a happy feeling of feeding animals but the irony is that most of them don’t even feed the stray dogs and cats or birds in their neighborhood.

This dependency of animals have also made them plastic eaters. This scene hurt me to the core.

It’s not surprising that we are curious about other animals and in exploring different places but it shouldn’t be at the cost of life of other lives especially innocent animals.

Lets be mindful when traveling to places like natural spaces and ensure that we don’t disturb the fauna or flora of that particular place and avoid feeding them or throwing plastics, papers, bottles, etc…

At last it is their home just like we have ours and let’s respect their boundaries too.