Look Out for Rikki

Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a gallant little mongoose, loved everything but snakes. His great enemies were the cobra family. Rikki was contemptuously friendly with Chuchundra, a muskrat, and on fair terms with Chua, a regular rat. But except in Kipling's enchanted garden, rats are the mongoose's standard prey, and are responsible for most of its progress around the world.

U.S. port officials were on the alert last week against a possible mongoose invasion. The furry, weasel-like creatures are treasured pets of many U.S. soldiers stationed in Hawaii, where the commonest mammals are mongooses. Many a G.I. will probably try to smuggle his mongoose back to the mainland. If a few succeed, the effect on U.S. wild life and crops may be disastrous.

In 1872, Jamaica imported mongooses (from Java). They cleaned up the rats in short order-- and then began on the snakes, the lizards and the birds. With all these insect-eaters out of the way, the insects all but took over the island. Finally the Government had to step in and get rid of the mongooses.

In Hawaii, where mongooses were introduced in 1883, the mammal-bird-insect balance was already out of kilter. Five species of rats were ruining sugar plantations. The mongooses got some of the rats, but the rest learned to live in the trees, where mongooses cannot climb. The rats got the tree-nesting birds, while the frustrated mongooses made life dangerous for ground birds.

Mongooses are still a hotly debated subject in Hawaii. Sugar planters, who rejoice in rat-free, ungnawed cane, are pro-mongoose. Sportsmen, who have tried with indifferent success to stock the islands with ground-living game birds, are anti.

But most experts agree that mongooses would be a disaster to the warmer parts of the U.S. In 1900, Congress passed a law prohibiting their immigration.

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