A Mongoose Surprise

In 1926 British India, the Adyar Club in Madras (Chennai) had an unusual resident.

Here’s yet another of Gladys’s funny experiences in 1920s India, seeing yet more things unfamiliar to her in America! First, a quick note:

Note: Subscribers to my Sell Your Nonfiction & Parenting by Faith blogs (with email addresses from my old blogs merging with my new this week) may wonder about these history-related posts! Future writing and parenting articles will post here at CrossConnectMedia.com. I hope you’ll also enjoy these quirky excerpts from my nonfiction book in progress based on near-100-year-old letters.

Now back to our Seattle gal, Gladys, and her adventures:

Gladys Gose Pearce, October, 1926

Adyar Club, founded in 1832, is our favorite club. We get to see old friends, new friends, and other people’s romances in the making. We love playing golf there on its mild course with the smooth grounds, kept in perfect condition as a laborer whisks them to perfection after each player departs.

After golf, I like to take a refreshing bath, change for dinner, and have time for a rubber of bridge on the veranda with a favorite drink. Twilight deepens, a brief sunset, short twilight, then it is night. Sometimes a tea and dance at the end of the day is pleasant.

At the club I saw a strange creature with a long tail dart across the veranda, followed by several small ones.

I found out it’s a mongoose, named Rikki – she’s quite privileged at the club, as she keeps snakes away. When she chose to have her young in the drawer where the club silverware was kept, out came the silverware so she’d feel welcome and stay.

In other letters written home to her mother in Walla Walla WA, Gladys described all kinds of creatures, including cobras, which mongooses were able to kill. I guess the trade-off in this situation was that kitchen sanitation was far less of a worry than poisonous snakes!

Indian Mongoose image by Bishnu Sarangi