NEW INDIAN EXPRESS (Chennai, India) 21 November 13 Feared reptile's furred nemesis (Raghu Anantha Ramu)
Popular perception deems it to be the snake’s mortal enemy. Snake charmers used to stage mock fights featuring this animal and the snake, but in a natural environment the fighting is hardly staged. Its weapons are quick reflexes, agility and a thick coat. It is known to make a giggling sound. If you have guessed that it is the mongoose we are referring to, you are correct. It’s time to get acquainted with the creature that is known to make snakes turn tail.
From the first sighting — a stuffed ferocious looking mongoose in the living room — to seeing it out in the open, it’s been a wonderful experience indeed. I saw it first in my garden, though at that time it was easy to confuse the mongoose with the civet cat, which also frequented the place. The mongooses would arrive late in the evening, soon disappearing into the bushes. In and around the village their heads would peep from the sugarcane fields, waiting for dusk so as to enter the water canals and quench their thirst. For farmers, they are a double-edged sword, eating rodents and insects but also making off with livestock!
The best sighting of these creatures was in my backyard in Chennai. I first sighted two of them one February evening, chasing each other on the ground and then on top of the acacia tree, moving from one branch to another. Till then I had no idea that they could climb trees!
Again in August, after a rainy night, a rain pool was almost full. By 10 am, an adult mongoose came along with two of its young ones. They foraged along the tank edges for food — invertebrates, mollusks, crabs, field mice and birds’ eggs. The young ones followed their mother every step of the way. The mongooses would then return to hide under the rocks amidst the bush cover. This was their routine for many weeks and they foraged along the banks, never entering the water.
One day in my backyard, some squirrels and a group of birds gave an alert call — given when they encounter a mongoose or a snake. The magpie robin, bulbul, koel, shrike, water hen and the kingfisher kept calling out loudly for a long time.
I noticed from my balcony window a huge rat snake coiled on top of the chopped tree stump looking down and hissing at something and expanding its hood. There was a mongoose below running left and right looking as if it would leap on the rat snake. While the rat snake, with its head raised a metre above on the tree stump remained safe, the mongoose moved away into the bushes.
The arrival of a construction company unit, which started to build sheds, soon became a threat to the mongoose habitat and its very existence. The earth movers worked day and night removing all the boulders and built sheds and a compound wall over them. The mongooses were forced to stay outside their habitat and after a few months only one mongoose was seen, which disappeared later as well.
Will the mongooses ever come back, was a big question.
After almost two years, a solitary mongoose appeared in our backyard. I found it lying curled on the broken tiles basking in the sun after a breezy and rainy day. This is the same place where the huge rat snake would appear and bask, before the rains in October. The snake would take shelter in the many burrows. The dense bushes are home to many nesting birds.
One day the birds made a distress call for a long time and later I saw the mongoose coming out of the bushes licking its mouth.
Again, after two days, I heard the squirrel and the drongo’s alert calls. Yes, there again was the culprit mongoose. But soon the bird calls stopped. All of a sudden, I saw the large rat snake jumping on to the acacia tree and the mongoose in hot pursuit. The snake raised itself a metre high and jumped from the tree into the rain pool.
Never knew that this rat snake, which literally ruled over the rain pool habitat, would vanish at the very sight of a mongoose!
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