Seeing a mongoose
Seeing a mongoose promised gain in a Hindu list of fortunate sights that also names the peacock and the kingfisher, as an encyclopedia from 1903 reports. Egyptians, it adds, held it unlucky to kill the animal.
What it may mean
In 1883, sugar planters brought mongooses to Hawaii to kill the rats eating their cane. The plan made sense on paper, and it largely failed in the field. Mongooses hunt by day, and many of the rats come out at night, so the two rarely met. The mongooses ate eggs, birds and insects instead, and both animals are still there. The story has a lesson that has nothing to do with Hawaii. A solution can be strong, quick and well meant and still arrive at the wrong hour for the problem: help offered in the morning to someone who struggles at midnight, a serious conversation scheduled when everyone is too tired to listen. In India the mongoose carries a happier reading, a sign of gain, and it is admired for standing up to cobras.
Depending on how you saw it
Crossing a road in India
The Hindu list of fortunate sights counts even the sound of the mongoose's name as a sign of wealth to come. A good omen like that changes how a person walks into the day. Which words lift your spirits when you merely hear them?
A mongoose facing a snake
The Indian gray mongoose can take on a cobra thanks to speed, thick fur and a body that resists the venom. It is built for that particular fight. Which fight are you well equipped for that others would gladly avoid?
The half-golden mongoose
In a story an Indian student learned from Amar Chitra Katha comics, a mongoose that is already half golden rolls on doorstep after doorstep, and its other half turns gold only at the house of a poor family who gave a hungry guest all their food. Whose small gift seemed larger to you than any grand one?
Why it happens in nature
Mongooses are quick, mostly day-active hunters of Africa and southern Asia. The Indian gray mongoose can kill cobras, helped by speed and by changes in its nerve receptors that make it resistant to the venom. Mongooses were released on Hawaii and several Caribbean islands in the late 1800s to control rats and now prey on native birds and eggs.
What folk beliefs say
Hindu tradition (India)
If the sound of the sky-lark, the ram, the peacock, the mongoose or the kingfisher is heard, or their names are heard mentioned, or the creatures are seen, there will be gain of wealth, according to Hindu omen lore recorded in 1903.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 569. View the page
Egypt
The Egyptians believed it unlucky to kill an ichneumon, the Egyptian mongoose.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 651. View the page
To reflect on
Which of your solutions has failed simply because it showed up at the wrong hour for the problem?