What do you do when you need to scare off monkeys who will try and disturb your crop, but you haven’t got a tiger to hand?
Well, you paint tiger stripes on your dog, of course.
At least that’s what one farmer from Shivamogga, in Karnataka, India did, in a desperate attempt to save his crops from savage monkeys who had been causing distress to farms in the area.
Srikanta Gowda, from Naluru village, Thirthahalli taluk, got the idea when he saw another farmer using a tiger-like doll as a form of scarecrow near Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada district about four years ago.
Gowda decided to get a doll of his own to place on his farm, and when he did he was over the moon to discover the monkeys did indeed get scared and avoided coming to his plantation.
Two days later, he put the tiger scarecrow in another area of his plantation and, to his joy, he witnessed the same result. But, although he knew it had been a good idea, he realised he couldn’t rely on the scarecrow forever.
So, the farmer decided to get his creative juices flowing by painting his dog to resemble a tiger, and I must say, he did a bloody good job with it too.
Gowda told the Deccan Herald the paint was hair dye and it lasted for more than a month, which is far more productive than having to move a fake tiger scarecrow around his farm everyday.
JS Chidananda Gowda, another farmer from Kakkarasi village in Sorab taluk, also decided to get creative with his crop-protecting methods by playing the audio of a dog’s bark on a speaker to scare away the monkeys from his maize field.
However, this is not the first time dogs have been painted to look like other animals. A cafe in China painted its chow chow dogs to resemble panda cubs and was even offering dyeing services to other pets. After a video of the dogs roaming around in the cafe went viral in October, however, the cafe was criticised for its treatment of the dogs. Following the negative response, the cafe said it would discontinue offering the dyeing services.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.