Desperate to reclaim his farmland from a gang of invading monkeys, a
farmer in Karnataka, India decided to pain his dog to look like a tiger
in the hopes that it would scare the monkeys away.
Srikant Gowda, a farmer from Karnataka’s Shivamogga region, recently
made international news headlines after it was reported that he used
hair dye to paint his watchdog in the characteristic stripes of a tiger.
The pooch already had a reddish hair color, so all he had to do was add
the black stripes and some white to give it the tiger look. It wasn’t
that Gowda had always wanted to own a tiger, but that he hoped the
disguise would help the dog drive away the monkeys ravaging his crops.
The Indian farmer told reporters that he got the idea four years ago
when he visited Uttara Kannada and encountered a farmer in Bhatkal who
was using a fake tiger doll to scare away monkeys. It seemed silly, but
he tried himself and was surprised to see that it actually worked.
However, he was convinced that the toy tiger wouldn’t fool the monkeys
for long, so he decided to try something else as well.
This year Gowda not only used hair dye to make his watchdog look like
a small tiger, but he also placed large posters of real tigers and his
own fake tiger all over his farmland, hoping that they would keep the
monkeys at bay. The “paint job” allegedly doesn’t harm the dog. It’s
actually hair dye and lasts up to a month before fading away.
According to The Youth, Srikant Gowda’s ruse was so successful that it inspired other Indian farmers to follow suit.
