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Hello! My name is Lisa Armogam,
I am 11 years old and I live in Pasea,Trinidad and I have a mongoose as a
pet.
We found the mongoose when it was a baby in the forest and it
seemed to have lost its mother so we brought it home. We fed him with a
dropper filled with milk and called him "Weasel", now we feed him chicken
because the mongoose is famous for stealing chickens from the chicken coop
and there is a calypso about a "Sly Mongoose" because the mongoose is very
cunning.
Our mongoose loves sweets and cakes and has a sweet tooth
which he has aquired from living with us because he steals all our sweets
from our hands and runs away with them.
Perhaps Rudyard
Kipling’s "Ricki-Ticki" was the most famous mongoose, and the best known
species is definitely the Indian mongoose.
They are rather small,
agile, weasel-like carnivores native to Africa, southern Europe, and Asia.
The mongoose is not native to the Caribbean but was imported to control
the rats and snakes in the sugar plantations by the British colonial
government from India.
The mongoose lives near streams, in
thickets, hedges, and fields feeding on rats, mice, snakes, lizards, eggs,
and insects.
One of the largest species was considered a sacred
animal in ancient Egypt. It checked the increase of crocodiles in the Nile
River by eating their eggs and gained the popular name “Pharaoh’s Mouse.”
Some species of mongoose are kept as pets for vermin protection
.
The Indian mongoose is renowned for killing cobras, which it is
capable of doing due to its very quick movements, thick protective hide,
and long, thick hair.
But "Weasel" does not bite us as he is tame
, he just likes to nibble on our fingers.
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