You just never know where inspiration is gonna come from.
Have you noticed on the back of cars there are often decals indicating the make up of the family? White stick figures roughly indicating gender, age, etc. The usual line up is X number of parents, X number of children, and X number of cats and dogs. So the other day Steve and I are out driving. At a stop light, we see different decals on the car in front of us. They indicate the family is composed of two adults and their two ferrets. We knew they were ferrets because the word ferret had been applied to the car under the image of two long cat-like creatures. I wasn’t hugely surprised. Over the years I’ve made the acquaintance of a few New Englanders owning pet ferrets. What surprised me was hearing the following words said softly beside me, “I miss my mongoose.”
My only childhood experience of a mongoose was watching the animated version of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi on television with my younger brother when I was seven. As far as I know there were no mongoose in Virginia. But Steve, whose father served in the U.S. foreign service, spent several years of his childhood in India. And there, in a bungalow in Bangalore, he was allowed to add a pet mongoose to his menagerie that already included a Dachshund and Siamese cat. “The cat used to carry the mongoose around like a kitten, with a hold on the back of its neck. And the dog allowed the mongoose to pummel its stomach as they all settled down to sleep together. Quite clearly the mongoose was in charge.”
“Just imagine,” Steve adds with a smile, “A Dachshund, a mongoose, and a Siamese cat walk into a room. There’s a story there, don’t you think?” Undoubtedly, especially when you add in a towheaded little boy.
Animal images from http://www.fantom-xp.com/
Steve image by his father circa late 1950’s.
