Knjigice
Fairy tale · Animal stories
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
The story of the brave mongoose who kept a garden safe
Also in: Riki-tiki-tavi (Slovenian) · Rikki-tikki-tavi (Slovak)
One summer a great flood filled the mongoose burrow at the edge of the garden. The water swept the little mongoose down the ditch, tossing and tumbling him until he lay on the garden path — wet, muddy and quite worn out. There the boy Teddy found him. "Mum, look!" he called. "It's a mongoose. He's soaked and hardly breathing. Let's take him in and dry him!"
1
Indoors they wrapped him in a soft cloth and warmed him by the fire. The mongoose sneezed, opened his eyes and hopped straight onto Teddy's shoulder. He wanted to sniff everything with his pink nose, for the motto of every mongoose is: "Run and find out!" As he scampered across the table he chirped: "Rikki-tikki-tikki-tavi!" And so he got his name — Rikki-tikki-tavi.
2
In the morning Rikki went out to explore the big garden, full of roses, bamboo and orange trees. From a bush came a sorrowful song. By a hanging nest stitched out of leaves sat Darzee the tailorbird and his wife. "Why are you crying?" asked Rikki. "The cobras Nag and Nagaina rule this garden," whispered Darzee. "We are all afraid — nowhere is safe any more."
3
Then Nag, a great black cobra, rose from the grass and spread his hood with its spectacle mark. "I am Nag. Be afraid of me!" he hissed. But Rikki was not afraid, for mongooses do not fear snakes. Behind his back Nagaina came gliding silently — Darzee cried out, and Rikki leapt high into the air. The cobras looked at each other: with a mongoose in the garden, nothing would go their way.
4
In the evening Chuchundra the muskrat, who never dares cross the middle of a room, shuffled along the wall. "Rikki, something bad is coming tonight," he whispered. Rikki listened, and by the bathroom drain he heard the cobras. "When the house is empty of people," hissed Nagaina, "the garden will be ours again. Go, Nag, and wait inside." Rikki's heart beat fast, but he did not hesitate.
5
In the dark bathroom Nag coiled himself around the big water jar and waited. Rikki crept closer, sprang, and held on tight. How they tumbled this way and that! The noise woke the house, and Father came running to help. When morning came, it was all over — and the great cobra was no more. "Rikki saved us," said Father. "Our little hero."
6
Darzee sang Rikki's praises at the top of his voice. "Don't sing yet!" Rikki stopped him. "Nagaina is still here, and she is hiding eggs in the melon bed. New cobras will hatch out of them!" Darzee's wife was a clever little bird: she pretended in front of Nagaina that her wing was broken, and hop by hop she lured her far away from the melon bed.
7
Rikki slipped in among the melons and found the cobra eggs in the warm earth, soft and white-shelled. One after another he broke them, so no young cobras could hatch. He was about to crack the last one when Darzee's wife called from the garden: "Rikki, quick! Nagaina has gone to the veranda — to Teddy!" Rikki seized the last egg and ran to the house as fast as he could.
8
On the veranda the family sat at breakfast, still as stone, for right beside Teddy's chair swayed Nagaina, ready to strike. Then Rikki came running with the egg in his mouth. "Nagaina, turn around!" he called. "I have your last egg. All the others are destroyed." The cobra turned toward him, and Teddy's father snatched the boy to safety in a flash.
9
"Give me back my egg, Rikki!" begged Nagaina. But the moment she seized it, she shot off the veranda and fled toward her burrow under the thorn bush. Rikki ran right behind her, faster than ever before. He knew something the others dared not even think: whoever follows a cobra down into her burrow must be very, very brave. And Rikki slipped in after her, into the dark.
10
The grass above the burrow grew still. "Rikki is lost," sang Darzee sadly. "Underground is the cobra's kingdom." But then the earth stirred, and out of the burrow crawled Rikki — dusty, tired and alive. He shook out his fur and said calmly: "It is all over. She, too, was no more." The birds carried the news from bush to bush across the whole garden.
11
That evening Rikki had supper at Teddy's table and fell asleep on his shoulder. The birds sang his name all over the garden, for it was safe again to nest, sing and fly. And from then on, Rikki-tikki-tavi proudly patrolled the garden every morning, wall to wall. As long as he kept watch, no cobra ever dared even peek through the garden gate.
12The End
