- Joined
- Aug 8, 2005
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- 11,497
Contains some graphic nasties. You have been warned.
I had read about mongoose. My cousin's friend had one briefly, and I helped care for 4 of them at a rescue center. Their cage was double wired with several signs stating 'Do Not Pet' and 'Watch Your Fingers'.
The lady of the household picked me up at the airport on Fiji and drove me to their house. Upon entering she shrieked at the top of her lungs, “YOU LITTLE S***!!” grabbed a convenient stick next to the door, then flung all three outside doors in the house wide open. We then engaged in a strange little slice of entertainment in the form of chasing a furry ball of greased lightning from room to room. Trying to kick the thing with my heavy engineer boots was a joke. The stick was no better. Imagine trying to whack a bat in mid flight with a foam rubber baseball bat.
Fifteen minutes of this and the thing finally got the hint and ran out the back door. The house STANK! Stank as in wanting to find a sewage pit to stick your head in for a breath of fresher air. So we searched the house, trying to find every place the critter had gone potty and do the scrub-rinse-repeat thing.
At dinner I was introduced to Nightmare which had already snuck back into the house, and regaled with a few anecdotes of it's antics. I was then given the naturalists tour of the vast majority of the remaining Fijian wildlife otherwise known as the local land fill-trash dump.
Fiji, and many other islands, has no ecosystem. The mongoose were introduced and that was the end of that. We drove along the darkened winding road, occasionally glimpsing a pair of dazzling rubies that would quickly vanish. Then more, and more. Soon we were seeing brilliant red pairs of eyes every 50 yards or so. Then 20 yards. Then we came around a curve and there was the trash mountain, covered in countless pairs of eyes. The garbage hounds were out sifting through the newest contributions. It was a pretty dazzling and startling spectacle. Those brilliant red eyes blinking on and off constantly.
The lady told me about acquiring a pair of orphan baby mongoose. One was about half the size of the other and she named them Simon and Garfunkle, and all was bliss. For about 3 days. They came back from an evening out, entered the kitchen, and roughly in her words, “There was blood everywhere! It was up the walls as high as my head. The floor was covered in guts and Simon was sitting in the middle of the mess, eating them!”
Apparently the darling duo got a tad peckish, duked it out and Simon got a lucky shot in, opening an artery in Garfunkle. He then disemboweled him and dined on the tastier tidbits. In the process of attempting to tend to Simon's war wounds, 4 people sustained injuries worse than Simon had.
The thing quickly demonstrated the true personality of the average mongoose. Roly poly playful like a kitten. Pick me up and pet me. And snuggle me. And I'm bored, BITE RIP SHRED REND and it's off to the next activity. A few minutes later it's back for more cuddling.
It quickly got renamed more appropriately as F***ing Fiend. The family's misgivings of rearing the little morsel blossomed into distaste which rapidly swung towards animosity and then, unabashed hatred. It was ridiculous keeping one as a pet when they were all over the neighborhood leaving no trash can unraided all night every night.
But getting rid of it was easier said than done. They put it's box out on the porch and shooed it out of the house. They then discovered it could sneak back in much faster than they could shoo it back out. Then one evening it acquired a new name. In the lady's words, “I heard this thump below my bedroom window. I opened the curtain and there's this demon hanging from the bottom of the window frame, fangs bared, hissing and squealing at me.” This awarded it the most polite name it was ever given. Most others involved various forms of the reproduction word and scat, spoken, yelled or screamed with varying degrees of vehemence. The neighbors, devout Catholics, named it the antichrist.
When inside the house, Nightmare had a very predictable itinerary. Each and every 24 hours would be occupied by pacing restlessly and exploring everything even if it had just been there 45 seconds earlier, 90% of the time, taking naps, 2%, acting cute and cuddly and wanting petting, 2%, eating, 2%, going potty, 2% and having an erection and licking it, often in a prominent place where everyone could watch, 2%.
Not only was getting rid of Nightmare a seemingly insurmountable problem, he made it worse by bringing home a girlfriend. The lady went into the kitchen one evening to encounter two mongoose, putting away the dog food. Unlike the average wild animal, the girlfriend demonstrated another aspect of the mongoose personality, utter belligerence, facing the woman down with bared fangs. Nightmare joined her taking several nips at the woman's ankles: “OUR KITCHEN! OUR DOG FOOD! TAKE A HIKE, BIPED!”
Incidentally, their dog, a local mongrel, was far smarter than it's humans, and avoided the mongoose like the black plague. It would even go spend the night at various neighbors houses just to get a real nights sleep without the fear of getting pounced or something taking a nibble of it as a midnight snack.
They had to develop a security system similar to a maximum security prison, with the humans the prisoners, as I encountered that evening. There's a mirror by the side door; check to see if Nightmare is lurking nearby before opening that door. At night if I went out I had to use the back door which let out into a small Nightmare exclusion zone and another door to the outside.
And so, in closing, may I fervently hope Rudyard Kipling is basking in a nethermost h*** undreamt of by Dante, surrounded by flaming piles of his book, Rikki Tikki Tavi.
I had read about mongoose. My cousin's friend had one briefly, and I helped care for 4 of them at a rescue center. Their cage was double wired with several signs stating 'Do Not Pet' and 'Watch Your Fingers'.
The lady of the household picked me up at the airport on Fiji and drove me to their house. Upon entering she shrieked at the top of her lungs, “YOU LITTLE S***!!” grabbed a convenient stick next to the door, then flung all three outside doors in the house wide open. We then engaged in a strange little slice of entertainment in the form of chasing a furry ball of greased lightning from room to room. Trying to kick the thing with my heavy engineer boots was a joke. The stick was no better. Imagine trying to whack a bat in mid flight with a foam rubber baseball bat.
Fifteen minutes of this and the thing finally got the hint and ran out the back door. The house STANK! Stank as in wanting to find a sewage pit to stick your head in for a breath of fresher air. So we searched the house, trying to find every place the critter had gone potty and do the scrub-rinse-repeat thing.
At dinner I was introduced to Nightmare which had already snuck back into the house, and regaled with a few anecdotes of it's antics. I was then given the naturalists tour of the vast majority of the remaining Fijian wildlife otherwise known as the local land fill-trash dump.
Fiji, and many other islands, has no ecosystem. The mongoose were introduced and that was the end of that. We drove along the darkened winding road, occasionally glimpsing a pair of dazzling rubies that would quickly vanish. Then more, and more. Soon we were seeing brilliant red pairs of eyes every 50 yards or so. Then 20 yards. Then we came around a curve and there was the trash mountain, covered in countless pairs of eyes. The garbage hounds were out sifting through the newest contributions. It was a pretty dazzling and startling spectacle. Those brilliant red eyes blinking on and off constantly.
The lady told me about acquiring a pair of orphan baby mongoose. One was about half the size of the other and she named them Simon and Garfunkle, and all was bliss. For about 3 days. They came back from an evening out, entered the kitchen, and roughly in her words, “There was blood everywhere! It was up the walls as high as my head. The floor was covered in guts and Simon was sitting in the middle of the mess, eating them!”
Apparently the darling duo got a tad peckish, duked it out and Simon got a lucky shot in, opening an artery in Garfunkle. He then disemboweled him and dined on the tastier tidbits. In the process of attempting to tend to Simon's war wounds, 4 people sustained injuries worse than Simon had.
The thing quickly demonstrated the true personality of the average mongoose. Roly poly playful like a kitten. Pick me up and pet me. And snuggle me. And I'm bored, BITE RIP SHRED REND and it's off to the next activity. A few minutes later it's back for more cuddling.
It quickly got renamed more appropriately as F***ing Fiend. The family's misgivings of rearing the little morsel blossomed into distaste which rapidly swung towards animosity and then, unabashed hatred. It was ridiculous keeping one as a pet when they were all over the neighborhood leaving no trash can unraided all night every night.
But getting rid of it was easier said than done. They put it's box out on the porch and shooed it out of the house. They then discovered it could sneak back in much faster than they could shoo it back out. Then one evening it acquired a new name. In the lady's words, “I heard this thump below my bedroom window. I opened the curtain and there's this demon hanging from the bottom of the window frame, fangs bared, hissing and squealing at me.” This awarded it the most polite name it was ever given. Most others involved various forms of the reproduction word and scat, spoken, yelled or screamed with varying degrees of vehemence. The neighbors, devout Catholics, named it the antichrist.
When inside the house, Nightmare had a very predictable itinerary. Each and every 24 hours would be occupied by pacing restlessly and exploring everything even if it had just been there 45 seconds earlier, 90% of the time, taking naps, 2%, acting cute and cuddly and wanting petting, 2%, eating, 2%, going potty, 2% and having an erection and licking it, often in a prominent place where everyone could watch, 2%.
Not only was getting rid of Nightmare a seemingly insurmountable problem, he made it worse by bringing home a girlfriend. The lady went into the kitchen one evening to encounter two mongoose, putting away the dog food. Unlike the average wild animal, the girlfriend demonstrated another aspect of the mongoose personality, utter belligerence, facing the woman down with bared fangs. Nightmare joined her taking several nips at the woman's ankles: “OUR KITCHEN! OUR DOG FOOD! TAKE A HIKE, BIPED!”
Incidentally, their dog, a local mongrel, was far smarter than it's humans, and avoided the mongoose like the black plague. It would even go spend the night at various neighbors houses just to get a real nights sleep without the fear of getting pounced or something taking a nibble of it as a midnight snack.
They had to develop a security system similar to a maximum security prison, with the humans the prisoners, as I encountered that evening. There's a mirror by the side door; check to see if Nightmare is lurking nearby before opening that door. At night if I went out I had to use the back door which let out into a small Nightmare exclusion zone and another door to the outside.
And so, in closing, may I fervently hope Rudyard Kipling is basking in a nethermost h*** undreamt of by Dante, surrounded by flaming piles of his book, Rikki Tikki Tavi.
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