Understanding the Photo Caption

*”In this Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014 photo taken with a cellphone camera, an Indian policeman tries to charge a leopard with a stick that was spotted at a hospital in Meerut, India.” AP Photo

Let me get this straight.

There was a leopard who’d been to a hospital in Meerut, India. Her problem, or deformity, was a lack of spots. The saintly doctors spotted her, and thus helped her to fit in with her kind.
But somehow this was wrong in the eyes of the law. So an Indian policeman got out his pencil and tried to charge the poor leopard.
I can only wonder what those charges might have been: Impersonating a young lioness? Defying commonplace by the changing of spots?

Oh, no. I have that wrong

There was a stick, I imagine a beautiful, straight, walking-stick of light-colored wood. It was left behind in the hospital waiting room by a crippled man, miraculously healed by the saintly doctors in Meerut, India.
A youth, nervously waiting to hear if his friend would pull through, picks up the stick and begins inking spots all over it with a black marker.
A policeman comes in the waiting room identifies the youth and begins to question him. Who was driving the car? How much had they had to drink? He notices the defaced stick.
“I’ll take that.” Neither policeman nor youth hear the news of the leopard that has escaped from the zoo.
But they both hear other news when the doctor emerges, wringing his hands and looking extremely tired and sad. The policeman says gently to the youth, “Why don’t you come with me.”
Thus it was that the two of them were together when they came upon the escaped leopard in a back alley. The youth goes for his phone—“They’re never gonna believe this!”—as the leopard rounds to spring.
The policeman, armed only with the spotted stick, charges at the leopard and is captured forever in the youth’s photo.

Another try.

It wasn’t a real leopard. It was an e-Leopard, named for Apple’s SnowLeopard operating system.
The saintly doctors at a hospital in Meerut, India, had developed a wonderful little gizmo, part memory stick, part battery charger.
The policeman had kept watch for several days outside the hospital room of the only potential witness in a case. The policeman watched the doctors come and go, charging their tablets with the miraculous stick as they did their rounds.
One day the policeman saw the witness show the first signs of movement. The flutter of eyelids; the opening of a hand. Then he looked to be trying to get out of bed. The policeman called to the nearest medic. Dr. Singh left his computer with the policeman and rushed to the side of the patient.
Dr. Singh did not notice that the stick was missing when the policeman handed him back his tablet. When the relief officer came on duty, the policeman took the stick home.
He was attempting to charge his e-Leopard at the moment when his son came in the room, whipped out his phone-camera and captured the policeman for eternity.

It’s no use.

I entrust to your imagination, or your googling, the impossible tale of the leopard, the hospital, the policeman, the spotting, and charging.
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