Four leopard cubs that got lost in a sugarcane field were reunited with their mother in Takali Haji village in Shirur, Maharashtra of India. They were rescued by the Wildlife SOS and the forest department in the Maharashtra village, reports NDTV.

According to The Dodo, the incident took place two days ago when farmers noticed four cubs, just 20-days-old, in the sugarcane fields. They immediately reached out to the authorities for help.

‘The tall sugarcane fields provide a safe cover for leopards to give birth in and to rear their young, but this also gives rise to man-leopard conflict situations, especially during harvest season,’ says Wildlife SOS.

‘The cubs were healthy. As we began preparations for the reunion, local villagers objected and said it was a threat to their life. It took us almost an hour to convince them the cubs need to go back to the mother,’ said Ajay Deshmukh, senior veterinarian at the Wildlife SOS Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre (MLRC), to Hindustan Times.

The cubs were kept under observation for a few hours and then placed in a crate at 6:30pm, at the same spot where they were found. In one hour, the mother leopard reached the spot and carried her cubs away.

‘We want them to live freely in their natural habitat and learn the skills of survival in the wild,’ said Kartick Satyanarayan, CEO of Wildlife SOS, to the Indian Express.