h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This afternoon I was looking out of the kitchen window. I saw something moving in the garden. I thought it was one of the skinny feral cats, but then I saw it wasn't ... it was a beautiful Slender Mongoose! It came out onto a small patch of lawn, looked around a bit, and then trotted off into the cover of shrubs and plants standing in nursery bags. It looked quite healthy and at home! It might actually have been living here for quite a while. It wouldn't ordinarily allow itself to be seen. I'll keep an eye out for it, or for traces of it. This is the second time I've seen a mongoose in the garden. The first was many years ago and it was one that only stayed for a short while, using a pipe for conducting rainwater as a temporary hideout.

This is what this mongoose looks like:

http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/mammals/carnivora/galerella_sanguinea.htm

Awesome!

Will it pose for you? What a beautiful thing to find in your garden.

How to have such a lovely visitor. I just hope that that doesn't mean you have snakes there as well, other than the garter variety. I hope it hangs around awhile and doesn't disturb your plants!

Is a mongoose called a 'muishond' in Afrikaans?

I just saw one listed as 'zwergmuishond', dwarf species, of course.

Oh, and it's illegal to import them here, or in New Zealand, so watch out, Rod - a mongoose is listed under the 'hazardous substances' law there...

Hi Elektra and Dmitri! I doubt it will stand still long enough for me, but I am just enjoying having got a look at it. Yes, they're called 'muishonde' in Afrikaans. This one is a 'swartkwasmuishond' ('black-tufted-mouse-dog'); the 'dwergmuishond' is a dwarf mongoose and we also get yellow mongooses, banded mongooses and marsh mongooses over here. I don't think this means we have snakes ... this small mongoose is not one of the known snake hunters and probably will be eating my poor little lizards and geckoes! I might have small snakes here; I've so far found in the garden bush snakes, house snakes, and thread snakes (tiny burrowing, ant-and-termite-eating snakes) all of which are non-venomous.

Is it as cute as it looks, and does it do any damage. Shame if it likes your little lizards and geckoes though. It is lovely when you find something new in the garden. I think I have seen everything I am likely to have in mine, sadly.

Websailor

What a wonderful world of wildlife you have.

I feel sorry for the geckoes, though.

Hi Websailor, yes it really is as cute as that or even more if you see it in action, it is very graceful.

These ones are also very cute:

http://www.idcphotovideo.com/blog/bruce-dorn/you-dont-have-be-a-rocket-scientist

http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2009/09/dwarf-mongoose-pups-at-the-bronx-zoo.html

(please click the video link!)

Don't have them in my garden yet, though!

Dmitri another thing I saw today ... we had a brief rain shower. In the western section of the garden there's a giant-leaved fig. Little pools of water collected in the leaves and after the rain a little white-eye (a bird) came and bathed in the water caught in the leaves!

Pictures:

http://www.plantzafrica.com/plantefg/ficuslutea.htm

http://www.warwicktarboton.co.za/birdpgs/796CpWEy.html

(there's one bathing as well!)

Amazing. Beautiful bird!

Ah yes lovely, Willem! Thanks! And I never saw a mongoose, of course, because they don't inhabit South Devon much, at all, , so it's great to see all these lovelineness rare creatures and plants.

Lovelineness rare creatures and plants? That's funny language. . Next time I see a rare creature or plant I'm going to say 'hey little loveliness!'

What a startling looking bird, and how sweet to see that. Birds bathing always amuse me. They do it here in the dead of winter among the ice and snow.

Websailor