Our 80-year-old ancestral house always had the reputation of being haunted. Whenever I enquired about the nature of the hauntings to my grandfather, he would reply that our ancestral ghosts play with an iron ball on the roof at night and their heavy yet swift tread can be heard below. I willingly suspended my disbelief to enjoy the prestige of having a family ghost, even if it merely engaged in the undignified act of running about to and fro with an iron ball. And then, one night, I had a ‘visiting’.

It was the dead of a sweltering summer night. As I studied for the approaching examination, I heard a terrible thumping on the roof. Something heavy was sprinting up and down our roof. At first I thought it was a thief. But when the noise continued for quite some time, I summoned all my courage to investigate the case of the nocturnal roof runner.

When I made to the roof, I saw nothing but my mother’s potted plants standing still in the moonlight. Then black shapes at the corners started moving and a dog-like beast with a trailing tail ran past me at breakneck speed. I was dead — first, with fear and then with the overwhelming smell that flooded my nostrils. It was an animal smell of foliage, dirty fur and dried blood. As my panic subsided, I had the brilliant realization that we actually have a resident werewolf.

But then the ‘werewolf’ made a leap into the neighbouring coconut tree and scampered down the trunk. Wild screeches of birds came from the trees in our garden and then all was quiet. Believing the show to be over, as I turned to go, I stared straight into the face of a creature that grimaced at me quite insultingly, showing a very pink tongue in a black mouth.

It took me some time to realize that our nightly visitors were actually palm civets or bham. I am yet to know how many sub-species of civets are found in West Bengal, but I have seen at least two types. The huge one that sprinted across my roof is almost the size of a dog, has a deep greyish coat and a huge tail. There is another breed that is smaller in size and has a pale yellow coat with black stripes. The identifying feature of these animals is their unusually long tails which they seem to use in the way monkeys do — to jump from tree to tree. And, as my mother would agitatedly testify, they have a fondness for bananas. Once my mother had bought two dozens of fat, green bananas along with other fruits for some puja. The entire family had left the house for the evening. On our return, we found the dining room strewn with banana peels. Although my mother would opine otherwise, I found the civets civil enough. They had left two bananas as concession for the gods.

Our domestic help, Bibhadi, tells me that the civets lift chicks and ducklings in the villages. And the villagers, in their turn, lose no chance to make a feast of the civets. When my distraught mother complained of the civets to Bibhadi, her husband enthusiastically offered to come and kill them for us. The few civets that are left in the suburbs of Calcutta are living under the threat of being wiped out any day in this way. People somehow find it easy to demonize these wild and nocturnal creatures. And they happily hack them to death.

This is unfortunate, since civet cats are one of the endangered species recognized by the WWF. Urban spread has already pushed them to the fringes of the city where they survive by marauding homes for food after sunset. Since the civets are wild creatures, they retaliate ferociously if attacked but otherwise, they are quite harmless. Is there any bravery in killing these hapless creatures that are already leading a marginalized life in the city suburbs? For my part, I am quite loath to lose our house-ghost however my mother might protest.