“I didn’t know anything about rats or bats when I got married,” giggles Payal Molur, wildlife educator and writer. But her husband’s doctorate on rodents opened her eyes to a whole new world. “Everyone writes about tigers and other glamorous animals,” she says, “No one looks at these creatures. They are misunderstood and persecuted.”
This led Payal to plan a series of picture books for kids that would offer information in a fun way. “I want to take once concept and explore that in each book.” In the first book, Pipsqueak Hears Echoes published by Pratham, Payal explained how bats use echolocation to fly.
The actual Malabar Spiny-backed Tree Mouse (Platacanthomys lasiurus)
The second book Mr Spiny’s Jungle Party on Mr Spiny or the Malabar Spiny-backed Tree Mouse (Platacanthomys lasiurus) will be published by Zoo Outreach Organisation (ZOO). This is the organisation’s first children’s book; it already brings out the monthly ZOO’s Print, a conservation science communication magazine and the Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT), a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Priyanka Iyer’s sketches are fun but scientifically appropriate
- Payal’s text is being illustrated by Priyanka Iyer, associate editor of JoTT. Her focus is on wildlife policy matters but she decided to take this up because “I want the sketches to be fun yet scientifically appropriate.” She describes Mr Spiny as “very cute but slightly poky”, which is what she’s trying to portray.
- Design and layout are being overseen by B Ravichandran, managing editor of JoTT. Given that his six-year-old daughter loves reading, he finds it “fun to be working on a children’s book.”
B Ravichandran is overseeing the design and layout
Dr Sanjay Molur, Executive Director and trustee of ZOO and Payal’s husband, explains the addition of children’s writing to the Publications division. One reason is of course the catch-’em-young philosophy. The second is more interesting. Not all rats are harmful, he says. “Apart from one or two species like the house rat, most other rats are found in the wild; many are canopy rats and mice,” he says, adding, “The biggest diversity of mammals is in bats and rodents. Yet, in the Wildlife Protection Act, they are considered vermin. Which means they can be killed. We wanted to highlight that 95% actually play a positive role.” And, says Payal, most are found nowhere else in the world except in the Western Ghats.
And the sketch done by Priyanka Iyer
- Crowdfunded publication
- Since this is ZOO’s first outing in print, the NGO has started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to publish Mr Spiny’s Jungle Party. “This is because we don’t want to price the book,” says Payal.
- Apart from those who contribute, the idea is to give the book away to urban and rural schools. They are also planning to translate the book into Kannada and distribute it in rural schools in Karnataka.
- “The idea is not to make profit but to get scientifically correct and fun story books on small creatures of India for people to read and learn from,” says Sanjay seriously.
Payal gets much of her information from Sanjay’s PhD. “I wanted to break down that scientific information for lay people and kids. There’s so much info and so much of it is fun,” and goes to offer an interesting piece of information: Mr Spiny’s poop smells of mint. I goggle and both Sanjay and Payal break into laughter. Sanjay narrates how he would set traps for the tiny creature. “In the morning, the food would be gone and the trap empty. The only thing that told us that it had actually been there was the minty smell.” I’m not sure I’ll look at mint the same way again now.
Payal offers another interesting titbit. In many records, Mr Spiny is said to be a pepper pest but “when we spoke to people who lived in the area, no one had ever seen it. Finally we found it in one place — a regenerated riverine forest of about 350 acres.” Researchers also confirmed that it is found only in large tracts of undisturbed forest land. “So how did it become a pepper pest?” Payal shrugs eloquently.