- Tuesday, April 23, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE escape could not have been sweeter for two brothers in Burhanpur in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
On Wednesday (30), Firoz Mansuri and his brother Sabir from Nepanagar, located around 18 miles from Burhanpur, were heading home at dusk for the former’s son’s birthday party on a motorcycle. It was then when a leopard appeared from a sugarcane field and gave the brothers a chase, India’s Times of India reported.
Cake came at brothers’ rescue
While the brothers tried to accelerate, the speedy feline was catching up on a muddy village road. It even pawed at the two-wheeler, leaving big scratches on the rear. Sabir, who was riding pillion and busy balancing the box of cake, then thought of using the sweet against the approaching danger. He hurled the cake at the leopard, hitting it on the face.
The animal was taken aback and before figuring out what had hit it, it ran back into the sugarcane fields. The cake was lost but two lives got saved.
Sabir later said the leopard followed them for over 500 metres and it was a narrow escape even though leopards are not known for attacking adult men.
A forest official told AFP: “Your first instinct when you sense danger is to do whatever you can to save yourself. That’s what they did.”
“They had a cake with them and they threw it at the leopard.”
The Times of India report added that the forest department was initially not sure if the animal was a leopard but the officials later confirmed a leopard’s pugmarks on the stretch.
