[caption id="attachment_105" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Frisky by Varun"][/caption]

Yesterday, early in the morning, Ananda and Rajkumar came up to say that Frisky had attacked a sheep and skinned it. Badri, Varun and I went down to see: Kumar, Parman and their families were there near the kottai (goat-shed). The goats were fine, but there was one bloody dying sheep with all the fleece scattered about.

Parman's father had apparently chased Frisky away a couple of times in the evening, but he had, they alleged, returned at night to do the deed. (The sheep had been bought for a Theniamman sacrifice; so Frisky just advanced its doom by a couple of days )

The whole evidence was circumstantial, but given the history that Magic and Rusty had slain hens in their day, I had to accept the judgement. And agree to pay Rs 1500.

Those of you who know about our dog sagas will remember that we have tried various things including keeping them tied up at all times and "taking them on walks". This really made the dogs (and us) miserable. Keeping them tied up in the day and releasing them at night served to make them aggressive to visitors. Eventually we settled on leaving them free all the time. This reduced their aggression, but we had to pay the price in terms of hens slaughtered. Many dogs also died due to eating poisoned bandicoot or poisoned bait.

Frisky seemed to have walked the razor's edge: Till last night. He never went out hunting hens, and we thought he had somehow "learnt" from Magic and Rusty's deaths. We have to wait and watch to see if the trouble recurs, for if it comes to repeated killings, the villagers may well poison him.

Piyush in Salem has offered him a home in the city away from the temptation of hens and goats. If the alternative is to put him down, we would accept the offer, albeit with a heavy heart.

Later in the evening, Duraisamy (who looks after Frisky in our absence) dropped by to commiserate. And to expound his theories, of course. He said that, of course Frisky may have done it; but it may well have been some other dog. His take was that it was a punishment for Kumar who had not done the Theniamman puja on time. I pointed out that the punishment was more mine than Kumar's. To which he said that we should wait and watch: If it was not Frisky's doing; then Aandavan (God) would surely give a sign.

Duraisamy went off after patting Frisky and telling him that he was really quite a "saadhu" (non-aggressive fellow), wasn't he...