Animal Rahat received a call about this civet, who was trapped in a 60-foot-deep well. She was fearful and managed to elude her rescuers for an hour. Finally, using a dog-catching net, the team successfully caught her, slowly and carefully pulled her out, examined her for injuries, and then released her in a safe location.

We also spent three hours rescuing a cobra from a well. And last but not least, our rescued-animal list got the addition of a new species—our very first porcupine! An Animal Rahat team received a call from a concerned villager at 6 a.m. stating that a porcupine had fallen into a well. The village was an hour’s drive away, but while the team was en route, two local villagers were able to retrieve the animal. Our vets treated him for an injured claw and learned that Forest Department officials had also been called and were planning to come get the porcupine and give him to a zoo. We talked the officials out of this plan, and they allowed us to transport him in our ambulance to a safe location far away from the well and release him.

One of our next priorities is to launch a campaign to get fences put up around open wells. The reason why these wells aren’t already fenced in is because of a bureaucratic quagmire in which each party says that it’s the other party’s responsibility. It will take a long time to untangle the bureaucratic knots, but we’ll do everything we can to speed up the process.