Super MOM!! A mongoose rescue

Yesterday, I was sitting at the lab tent table, minding my own business, eating lunch. All of a sudden, I saw something streak by a meter away from me. It was obviously our resident slender mongoose but it was carrying a large ball of some sort. I immediately thought she was carrying a baby and got very excited to have her reproducing but, by this time, she was long gone so I went back to eating. Until I began to hear a strange noise, coming from the bushes that the mongoose had run out from. It was a noise I had never heard before, so I went to investigate. Lo and behold! I found this little guy!
He was sitting there calling for his mom incessantly.
I kept an eye on him and sure enough, Mom came dashing to the rescue!
She picked him up,
and whisked him away to safety!

The mongooses return....along with some other unexpected stuff

We had all told Dee she would be sure to have dwarf mongooses attend breakfast with us every day while she was visiting our camp in the Mara Conservancy. They are usually extremely predictable, and they clearly enjoy ]treats like scrambled eggs and toast just as much as we do. However, the entire time Dee was staying in that camp, the mongooses were apparently off foraging at the other end of their home range, so she never saw them. We all felt terrible about this, but we also all recognize that we simply need to accept whatever Mother Nature hands us out here; although Mother Nature put on a pretty good show for Dee during her Kenya visit, the dwarf mongooses weren’t part of it. Camille, who lives in the Conservancy camp year-round, reports that the mongooses showed up at the breakfast table again the very first morning after Dee & I had to drive away to return to Nairobi for Dee’s homeward bound flight. So here’s a glimpse of what Dee missed mongoose-wise. On the other hand, 3 days after Dee left, a hippo died in the forest 50 meters from camp, and the lions and North hyenas have been warring over the carcass day and night ever since. Not only does this mean it’s very scary living in that camp right now due to the constant presence of so many large carnivores, but this also means the whole camp smells absolutely unbelievably terrible, as the hippo carcass is situated directly up wind of camp. As long-time blog readers will recall, however, spotted hyenas can make a hippo carcass vanish very quickly, so it ought to be completely gone in only a couple more days. Hopefully Camille will post a blog entry soon about adventures associated with the dead hippo in camp.

Camp's newest visitors

Our latest invasion is by a family of banded mongooses (no, the plural is not "mongeese"). Banded mongooses are small social carnivores that inhabit the Mara. To give you a reference point, they look and act a lot like meerkats—lots of vigilant behavior by standing up on their hind legs and swiveling their heads around. Check out the nasty little claws; they're particularly impressive I think.

Interestingly, mongooses are hyenas' closest relative (I think I've talked about this before, perhaps). The four species of hyena—spotted, striped, brown, and the aardwolf—are their own family (Hyaenidae), but if you back up the taxonomic chain a little to the order Carnivora, you'll see that the hyena family and the mongoose family share their most recent common ancestor. So hyenas are more closely related to mongooses than they are to cats, dogs, or bears (I mention bears because here at Fisi Camp we tend to think hyenas have "bear faces"). That being said, mongooses and hyenas split LONG ago, so they still aren't necessarily "closely" related...just closEST.

Anyway, these guys are totally cute, and make really interesting vocalizations. They are constantly squeaking and chirping at each other as they prowl around in search of food. As you'll see in one of these photos, they have recently found a constant food source in some of our more generous camp members (not me—let the record show that I don't feed wildlife in camp!).

It's quite amusing: we'll be sitting enjoying our breakfast, and all of a sudden a dozen mongooses will sprint in from every direction, run around like mad for half an hour, then equally suddenly dash off to their next appointment. The real highlight was watching one take a snail shell and try to crack it by repeatedly whacking it against one of our tent poles. I hope they stick around!

NSS Episode Three: Moving Day

In a land where Elf (the dominant female) is queen, and clashes with lions are the norm, we bring you a clan. Located between the beautiful Oz Valley and the famous Mara River, this is where the drama unfolds. Known to many as “fisi,” we just call them “North.”

This is the North Side Story.

Episode 3: “Moving Day”

All of the fan mail, post cards, and requests for autographs have really gotten to our cast members of the North Side Story. Just the other day, they decided that the current den they were living in was not receiving the spotlight as well as it should have.

Abandoned den with new resident mongoose.

Thus, they moved to a den that would garner just a little more attention.

Ok, they moved to a den that would encourage a whole new fan base. They moved to a den that is right off the main road near Serena Lodge. Now every tourist, visitor, and guest of the Mara Conservancy can’t go a single day without acknowledging our new blog-stars.

New den just off the main road.

My guess is next week we’ll see them on MTV-cribs. Hopefully they’ll make sure to clean up nicely before the film crews arrive.