III.
VISITORS IN FUR, AND OTHERS.
AS a contrast to the fidgetty birds, glance your eye along the garden path and take note of that pink-nosed mungoose[1] gazing placidly out of the water-pipe. It looks as shy as Oliver Twist before the Board; but that is only because it sees no chance of being able to chase you about, catch you and eat you. If you were a snake or a lizard you would find it provokingly familiar, and as brisk as King Ferdinand at an auto-da-fé, for the scent of a likely snake is to the mungoose as pleasant as that of valerian to cats, attar to a Begum, aniseed to pigeons, or burning Jews to His Most Catholic Majesty aforementioned; and when upon the war-trail the mungoose is as different to the every-day animal as the Sunday gentleman in the Park, in green gloves and a blue necktie, is to the obsequious young man who served you across the counter on Saturday. Usually the mungoose is to be seen slinking timorously along the narrow watercourses, or, under cover of the turf edge, gliding along to some hunting-ground among the aloes; whence, if it unearths a quarry, it will emerge with its fur on end and its tail like a bottle-brush, its eyes dancing in its head, and all its body agog with excitement, — reckless of the dead leaves crackling as it scuttles after the flying reptile, flinging itself upon the
- ↑ The Ichneumon, Viverrinæ.
