Do people really have pet mongooses (mongeese?)

Factual Questions
1

We’ve all read Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, or seen the half-hour TV cartoon adaptation, right? In it, our titular hero is an Indian mongoose who is adopted as a house pet and cobra exterminator by an English family who, like most of Mr. Kipling’s Englishfolk, are living in some snake-happy corner of India.

He’s depicted as a friendly little critter, one who’s not only a loyal, brave and protective guardian, but quite tame and playful as well. If you were like me when I was a shorty, you’d come away from reading about Rikki with the notion that your own pet mongoose would be a delightful thing to have, and the desire to do just that when you grew up.

But when I grew ujp, there was no pet mongoose for me. In fact, now I am starting to doubt whether anyone outside that fictional family has ever had a pet mongoose!

Set me right regarding this, fellow Dopers, please. Have people really kept pet mongeese as a regular thing (I’m sure that just about every animal there is has been someone’s pet at least once, no matter how unsuited for human company the beast). Are they tamable? They look like little brown weasels in all the pictures I’ve ever seen, and that’s not a family of fauna known for its friendliness with folks. Has anyone here ever had a pet mongoose oif their own? Was it a nice pet?

Or was Mr. K just pulling our legs to tell a good story, like he was with the one about the wolves who adopted a baby?

2

Don’t know the answer to your question, but I always liked “polygoose” as the plural :slight_smile:

Brian

3

This page at the Honolulu Zoo Web site says that the Indian mongoose is frequently kept as a pet. That is the type introduced to Hawaii back in the day, though when I lived there I didn’t know anybody with a mongoose pet.

4

Aren’t ferrets also in the weasel family?

5

I lived for a little while on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. I was told that people there would keep mongooses as pets, although I personally never knew any who did. Apparently they were introduced to help control the rat population, which was seen as a threat to the sugar cane plantations.

Doesn’t rise to the normal standards of evidence for the Dope, but there it is.