A range forest officer entered a 100-ft-deep dry well in to check on a leopard that fell into the well in southern India's Karnataka on July 17.<br /><br />According to reports, the locals in the area called the forest department officers alerting them of a leopard stranded inside a dry well.<br /><br />A team of officials including Nagarahole Tiger Reserve director, D Mahesh Kumar, and Antharasanthe RFO Siddaraju, rushed to assess the situation and rescue the animal.<br /><br />The team tried to trace the leopard by lowering a camera, however, no visuals of the big cat were recorded.<br /><br />"Our cameras did not get any visuals of the leopard, neither did we hear any noises from inside the well," Siddaraju told Newslions Media.<br /><br />Following this, RFO Siddaraju decided to enter the well himself and rescue the animal.<br /><br />However, after several attempts, Siddaraju failed to spot the leopard inside the well.<br /><br />"The breadth of the cage is similar to the radius of the well. My cage was closed from two sides with opaque metal cover. Looking through the other two sides, I couldn't spot the feline and was pulled back up," Siddaraju said.<br /><br />Forest staffers returned to the office around 8 pm but again they were summoned after villagers sighted the big cat.<br /><br />This time the team heard noises from inside the well.<br /><br />Investigating further with torches, they finally spotted the feline ducked on the floor.<br /><br />The team spent the whole night arranging for ladders, trap net, and cameras to get a better view of the animal and rescue it.<br /><br />The same night they lowered a bowl of water inside the well presuming that the feline would be thirsty after spending days without drinking.<br /><br />On July 18, the forest officials covered the ground of the well with a trap net hoping to lure the leopard onto it and haul the animal out.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the officials rigged the well with special cameras to get live updates from the well.<br /><br />The video shows the leopard crouched one-feet-above the ground inside a small cave-like structure. <br /><br />"Now we are waiting for the leopard to climb into the net so that we can pull it out. We have placed a piece of meat on the trap net to bait the animal onto it," Siddaraju said.<br /><br />However, the second option would be to lower a veterinarian into the well inside a cage and tranquilize the animal using a sedative dart.<br /><br />According to forest officials, the leopard would then be administered medically and released into the wild.
