Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1892 — No Mongoose Need Apply. [ARTICLE]

No Mongoose Need Apply.

Beware, says a writer in Goldthwaite’s Geographical Magazine, of tampering with nature's balance. One way of doing this is by introducing new animals, as happened when the sparrow was delberately brought from Europe and liberated on this continent. The latest suggestion is to import the mongoose in order to reduce obnoxious mammals like rats, and also lizards and snakes. The mongoose was taken to the island of Jamaica for this purpose, and has turned out to be a worse pest than any It was intended to remedy. To escape the mongoose the rats of Jamaica have learned to climb the trees and into the upper stories of houses. “In the last residence which I occupied in the vicinity of Kingston,” writes an American in Jamaica, “while the mongoose was so common as to make chicken raising an expensive luxury, the rats held nightly high carnival in my rooms, over my bed and through my clothing.” The mongoose in Jamaica will sit by a lizard and eat a mango, and is suspected of an appetite for bananas. The animal is absolutely untamable, its bite dangerous, and its enmity to poultry, cats and small dogs uncompromising. The bringing of any new animal to a continent is a dangerous piece of business.