Delia Bronkhorst, a 35-year-old specialized clerk and document handler, sent in this footage of a mongoose from Kruger National Park just having a good time.
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Delia was on a drive with her mother, and said they’d “stopped to watch a huge herd of buffalo coming down to the river to drink”, when something caught her eye and they moved a little closer to investigate.
She was shocked to realize that it was not just a squirrel, as she had originally assumed, but a mongoose that was in the process of treating a snake like nothing more than a swing.
Swing Swing Swinging
The unknown snake was already dead when Delia started filming, but its body was still twined inextricably around the branch from which it dangled limply.
The mongoose, keen to enjoy its meal, was leaping up to attempt to bring the snake down to a level where it could enjoy it. The snake, however, was offering some final resistance, and the mongoose seemed to be having fun with the snake where it was.
Unwilling to give up, the mongoose kept repeatedly jumping up and dangling from the corpse of the snake, using it like some kind of unusual swing as it rocked back and forth.
A Marvelous Little Mammal
Snakes and mongooses are famous enemies that do not get along at all. The little mammals are unique in that they are not only exceptionally fast and agile, but also immune to the venom that snakes use to defend themselves.
These two qualities make them a perfect predator of dangerous reptiles, which are themselves very fast. The one weakness of this mongoose is that it hasn’t worked out how to untie knots.
This mongoose was giving everything it had, dangling from the snake and rocking back and forth in an attempt to dislodge it, but despite how hungry it must have been, it looked more like it was having fun than that it was trying to get a meal.
A Circus Performance
Delia said that “excitement was definitely the emotion that best describes this sighting” and that she “couldn’t believe [they] were actually seeing something that amazing”.
The high grass served to enhance the mongoose’s performance, as it comedically bounced again and again into view. It could have been some kind of circus act, with the mongoose bouncing on a trampoline just out of sight.
Despite struggling to get the snake down, the mongoose had remarkable accuracy with its jumps, and it hit the snake almost every time, unless it was swinging too much from the mongoose’s games.
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An Elusive Meal
The frustration of the mongoose was evident as its repeated efforts to secure itself some food brought the snake closer and closer to falling each time it jumped.
Eventually, after a lot of effort from such a small creature, the mongoose managed to dislodge the snake from the tree branch and bring it to the ground.
Delia said that, “unfortunately, the grass was too high for [them] to see the mongoose enjoy its well-deserved meal”, but after the energy it had expended just getting the snake down, let alone killing it, the little mongoose must have worked up quite an appetite.
