mongoose

[Marathi mangūs, of Dravidian origin.]

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The name for about 39 species of carnivorous mammals which are members of the family Viverridae. This family also includes the civets and genets. Mongooses are restricted in their distribution to the warmer regions of the Old World, ranging from the Mediterranean into Africa and Southeast Asia. These are plantigrade animals about the size of a cat and have a long slender body, short legs, nonretractile claws, and scent glands. Some species are fair climbers even though the claws are nonretractile. Mongooses are predators, feeding on snakes, frogs, fishes, and crabs, and they are especially fond of bird and crocodile eggs. The mongoose cannot legally be brought into the United States because of its destructive habits. See also Carnivora; Civet.

It's not a goose but a small meat-eating mammal, something like a weasel or ferret, about a foot long with a tail of equal length. Since it's not a goose, its plural is not mongeese but mongooses. It's native to southern Asia and Africa.

You won't have any mice if you have a pet mongoose. But then you might not have any kittens or puppies either. Mongooses are so effective in getting rid of small mammals that they are household pets in India. They are banned from import into the United States because they would destroy too many of our native creatures.

From a mongoose you can learn how to catch a snake. First, get its attention and dare it to strike. Second, jump out of the way. Third, repeat steps one and two till the snake is worn out. Then grab the snake's head in your mouth, crush it, and enjoy your meal at leisure. During steps one, two, and three you do have to watch out, because if a poisonous snake bites you while you're taunting it, you're dead. But if you're a mongoose, once the snake is dead you can eat it, venom and all, without the slightest indigestion.

In number of speakers, Marathi is one of the world's major languages, spoken by about sixty-five million people in western India. It belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of our Indo-European language family. Mongoose, a word Marathi obtained from a non-Indo-European Dravidian source, showed up in English, in a book about India, as early as 1698. From Marathi we also have carambola (1598), an evergreen tree and its star-shaped fruit, and bummalo (1673), also known as Bombay duck (1860), not a duck but a kind of fish.

Small, cat-sized mammal in the family Viverridae. There are a number of varieties and genera including the Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon) and the banded mongoose (Mungos mungo). A voracious eater of rodents and reptiles and a favorite house pet.