I used to watch this cartoon special every year. They would always run it back-to-back with The Jungle Book.
But I don’t think it’s been on TV in 20 years. Is it too much to ask, why they don’t ever show it any more? … Too scary? Too 3rd world-colonial? Too violent?
And what, no DVD either?
Oh, I remember this! With the cobras and the nest and the birds! Have you tried to Google it?
I always used to watch it as a kid, too.
It seemed to disappear, but within the last couple years, I saw it on network TV again.
I love the animation of the mongoose moving.
IINM, it’s based on a Rudyard Kipling story.
And it was always scary.
Who has delivered us? Who?
Tell me his nest and his name!
Riki - the valliant and true.
Tikki - with eyeballs of flame.
Riki Tikki Tavi the ivory-fanged
the hunter with eyeballs of flame.
…or something like that.
Scary memory:
“If you move, I strike. If you do not move, I strike.”
One of my favorites. I remember seeing again in the last year. It was on TNT or TBS one weekend. It is one of the more forgotten Chuck Jones cartoons. Staring June Foray and Orsen Welles.
Hehe, I always used that movie as a kid to justify not eating the yucky things on my dinner plate. I would say “Mom, but what if the cobras come in the night. A slow mongoose is a dead mongoose.” Then I’d zip away from the dinner table chittering like Riki and running all over the house and bouncing on the furniture.
My parents adored me, I’m sure.
What the… this was a cartoon? I just remember reading the story! Was it a cartoon like a series, or a one shot thing like a movie?
It was a one-shot cartoon. About an hour long (I think). With Orson Welles, and animated by Chuck Jones. I haven’t seen it in years, but I’m sure you could find it at www.amazon.com, or the like.
I don’t recall the cartoon, but loved the short story. I remember reading it more than once as a youth.
The cartoon was freaky.
The cobra got all up in the kid’s grill.
When Ricky Ticky moved you’d see him in one place, then you’d see an elongated blur, then you’d see him in another place. It was a really cool way of showing his speed.
The snakes moved real smooth and real silent and knew where the kids slept.
For a super dude you sure are lazy 
Here is the direct link. I might have to pick that up.
IIRC there’s a part where a cobra strikes and the screen goes black for a second and you just see the pattern on the back of cobras’ necks in red. I remember getting hit in the face once when I was a kid (probably while doing something stupid, but i don’t remember what – playing soccer?) and seeing basically this same pattern and thinking, “Cool! Just like Rikki Tikki Tavi!”
Also, I went to a snake (“habu”) museum in Okinawa once and went over to the mongoose vs. cobra fighting pit. Much to my sorrow there was a sign that said (paraphrased): “Due to such and such animal-loving hippie act, we are no longing showing this exhibit as of December, 1999.” This was in April of 2000. Missed it by 5 months :(.
Oh well, I guess animal rights really are more important than my entertainment, but damn that would’ve been cool.
Hey, Loach, I’m union. It’s my lunch break. Try Batman.
Loved this as a kid.
Loved it so much I bought it on video for my daughter.
Now she loves it.
Rikki-Tikki was the reason I grew up to have ferrets! I’d always wanted a mongoose and a ferret is as close as you can get. Mine never killed any cobras but they were murder on the Giant Texan Cockroaches of Doom that invaded my bathroom one memorable night.
And wasn’t RTT voiced by Roddy MacDowall?
According to idmb, Riki was voiced by Shepard Menken, a long-time voice actor who didn’t do much else afterwards.
Roddy Macdowall was the narrator of The White Seal, another Chuck Jones one-shot made the same year as Riki-Tiki-Tavi. I remember this one being shown in school a lot more than RTT, which was always a disappointment to me as a child since RTT was so much cooler.
Besides the Riki story, and the more famous stories about Mowgli (the frog), a couple of the Kipling shorts in The Jungle Book are about seals. Was The White Seal inspired by them? RTT is amazingly faithful to the Kipling story for a cartoon, IMSC.
Hey wait a second! That’s not a mongoose, it’s a squirrel with large breasts! He looks nothing like the Rikki-Tikki I remember!
This looks more like my Rikki-Tikki.
Are they both the same movie? IMDB has two Rikki-Tikki-Tavi movies listed for 1975. I’m guessing that’s the year Kipling’s copyright ran out.
I think they are the same thing. The Amazon like just has updated cover art drawn in a different style.
It does say Chuck Jones on the cover so I think it is the same thing.
I seem to remember the Mowgli story, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal all being segments of one feature-length Kipling animated movie. Am I imagining things again?