mongoose

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits.

When he revived, he was lying in the hot sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small boy was saying, "Here's a dead mongoose. Let's have a funeral."

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity.

He sat on all their laps one after the other, because every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a house mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in; and Rikki-tikki's mother (she used to live in the general's house at Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came across white men.

He was afraid for the minute, but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's business in life was to fight and eat snakes.

He came down almost across her back, and if he had been an old mongoose he would have known that then was the time to break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of the terrible lashing return stroke of the cobra.

Rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a mongoose's eyes grow red, he is angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind legs like a little kangaroo, and looked all round him, and chattered with rage.

If you read the old books of natural history, you will find they say that when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures him.

Our mongoose is killing a snake." And Rikki-tikki heard a scream from Teddy's mother.

When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have any mongoose in the garden?

"Do you want something special, or will an ordinary mongoose do?"

When Adam got back to the carriage, carefully carrying the box with the mongoose, Sir Nathaniel said: "Hullo!