I demand there be a Monday Mongoose feature on this blog!
Welcome to another wild edition of Picture Day Wednesday here at The Nest, once again featuring some of my fine, safari work taken on my trip to the zoo two weeks ago. While many of the animals that are confined to the zoo are somewhat boring to photograph due to the fact that they lope or lie around unlike they would if their lives were in danger on the Serengeti, there was one section where the furry inmates provided me with the same exercise in quick reflexes that bring me all of those squirrel pictures you ooh and aww over every Saturday… and that would be the exhibit inhabited by a handful of totally cute and adorable black mongooses!
Don’t be shy… look at the camera so you can be properly adored by my critter loving following.
You may not have instantly thought “mongoose” when you saw these little ebony furballs, and that’s because the black mongoose is only found in a very small part of Namibia and Angola and is one of the rarer species of the mongoose family. Like its better known relatives, the black mongoose has what Wikipedia rather loosely describes as a “broad diet”…
Like other species of Galerella in southern Africa, the black mongoose has a broad diet, consuming adult, larval and pupal sarcophagid flies, amongst other insects, as well as reptiles, birds, small mammals and fruits…
Or in other words, they’ll devour anything that does not eat it first. Thankfully, we zoo tourists were kept a safe distance away from these little anklebiter carnivores…
Well, hello Clarice!
Speaking of getting eaten… I guess to keep the title of this post relevant, it’s time for the mandatory “I went to the zoo and watched the animals get it on” photo…
Happy humpday, everyone!
Just be thankful the zoo didn’t have any muskrats….
Oops, sorry!
I’ll do that to you one more time next Wednesday….
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
they are cute somehow… and they eat the most things I don’t like… and they have a sense for entertainment… I put two on my shopping list :o)
LOL, I hope not to put in one of those recipes!
Damn…maybe a baby mongoose is in the future?
I did not see notice if they were practicing safe mongoose sex or not….
Mongooses or mongeese?
Mongeese, I think.
Actually, the dictionary says BOTH are okay. So call’em whatever you like.
Considering the fact that I like just plain “gooses” better than “geese”, I’ll stick with mongooses…
And they also will take care of your intrusive snake population! I think maybe we could use a few around here. Teach those cheeky chipmunks a thing or two ! And eat the big bad spiders. And snakes, though our snakes are a lot less dangerous (as it turns out) than our nasty, hairy spiders. Maybe we could keep them inside and they could eat the ants? Or do we need a not-so-cute but more efficient anteater?
I think there was an anteater at the zoo as well, but he wasn’t available to rent out… which is a shame since they find every pore imaginable at the front of my house to invite themselves inside…
I was going to make a Captain and Tennille joke, but of course you beat me to it. 🙂
That was one of my least subtle earworm references… and for a song I can’t stand on top if it!
Yay, I’m for “Monday Mongoose” 🙂
Cute chaps. To be honest, anything that looks like that is “ferret” in my head.
Yep, now that you mention it, that’s what they resemble. I’d actually forgotten what animal it was and had to look it up through actual internet research. I hate when I have to do hard work for a post!
Those are cute little critters! I could use a few to take care of our neighborhood rat problem. My cats just aren’t getting the job done. Although I wonder how large of a small mammal the mongoose will eat. Little Red is pretty small….
Do the animals always celebrate hump day when you visit the zoo?
ody & biskit….now we noe wear de mongooze were…..
when we asked ….where they were……
when de bass terd snakez waz on de yard ~~~~~~
🙂 ♥
Ricky Ticky Tavvy! Mongooses are amazing and yes I did some oohing and ahhing and one gigglesnort! Anyone who doesn’t enjoy the company of snakes would adore these critters. ❤
I too loved the Rikki Tikki Tavi story and so have always liked mongooses (or should that be mongeese?). My all time favorite animals would be otters, squirrels and mongooses. I guess they have a similar charm.
Ha ha, animals and children!
Those little fuckers are totes adorbs!