When farmers had found a leopard cub in the middle of a sugarcane field they called the Maharashtra Forest Department for help. Wildlife SOS was called out because of their experience with rescuing leopard cubs. It was important to act quickly because the farmers were in the middle of harvesting and it wasn’t safe for the baby animal.

Wildlife SOS looked over the nearly 2 month-old female cub and saw that her paws had gotten burnt and scratched from the sugar cane being burnt. So they treated the cub’s feet and wounds and checked her vitals. She was ready to be returned to her mom. They placed the cub in a safe box to being the process of reuniting her with her mother. The rescuers would monitor things with camera traps and then they placed her back in the sugar cane.

When night fell, the mama found her cub but couldn’t figure out at first how to free her kitten. The lid eventually was popped off and the mama tipped the container over and freed her baby. She gave the cub a few licks and then picked her up by the scruff of the neck and brought her back into the nearby forest, the Shirur Forest Range of Maharashtra.

This isn’t the first cub that Wildlife SOS has rescued from sugar cane fields. Leopards appear to like the thick “grass-like” coverage but because sugar cane crops are burnt before harvest to remove the leaves and tops of the sugarcane plant, it is dangerous to the leopards. It is also not healthy for people.

Here’s a video of Wildlife SOS helping a one-and-a-half month old leopard cub with similar burn wounds on her paws who is also reunited with her mother.