A HUNTED MONGOOSE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 68, 17 September 1927, Page 20

A HUNTED MONGOOSE

DIVES DOWN A LIFT SHAFT.

The lightning activity of the mongoose (which enables the creature to destroy poisonous snakes) had a twentyfour hours illustration at the London 200 during which time the animal baffced scores of would-be captors (say! tie "Daily Mail"). Eecently a Fellow of the Zoological Society was allowed to nurse the mongoose. One minute later the mongoose decided that while it could stand snakes it objected to the F.Z.S. The mongoose bolted. It flashed out of the house and streaked through the gardens, while some plucky women tried to scoop it up with parasols. The mongoose, however, made for the Zoological Society's offices, and was seen to enter the room of the Curator of Mammals—a perfectly proper place at which to report itself. Then it vanished.

No one knows what it did during the night, but next day at lunch time it was sighted wandering abount the ground floor of the offices. Girl clerks tried to catch it in nets, but it rushed upstairs, where the Curator cornered it. Then the mongoose took a suicidal leap down the lift-shaft falling with a plop. There was a pause. If you wanted to open the lower doors of the shaft you had to lower the lift. If you lowered the lift you squashed the mongoose. There was some talk of baiting a line with a cobra and fishing down the well for the mongoose, but it came to nothing. A net was then introduced which spurred the mongoose into climbing a wall and scooting down a passage. At the end of this the mongoose came to r strongroom. The door was open, and the refugee dashed inside. '' Safe at last," said everyone, with every meaning of the word. A net at the end'of a broomstick finshed the incident.