Mambas to Meerkats

Wikipedia says that: The meerkat or suricate, Suricata suricatta, is a small mammal belonging to the mongoose family. Meerkats live in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. A group of meerkats is called a “mob”, “gang” or “clan”. Meerkats are primarily insectivores, but also eat lizards, snakes, scorpions, spiders, plants, eggs, small mammals, millipedes, centipedes and, more rarely, small birds. Meerkats are immune to certain types of venom, including the very strong venom of the scorpions of the Kalahari Desert, unlike humans. Meerkats are small burrowing animals, living in large underground networks with multiple entrances which they leave only during the day. They are very social, living in colonies averaging 20–30 members. Animals in the same group regularly groom each other to strengthen social bonds.

In case you haven’t guessed, there are meerkats where we are staying right now. Well, actually, there were meerkats, now there is just one meerkat living in the maze of twisty little passages, or twisty little maze of passages, or little maze of twisty passages, or- you get the point. It lives in a maze of tunnels in the shade of a small acacia tree in the middle of the driveway. As I was saying earlier, there used to be more, as in one more, but it died at nine years of age, leaving the one year old to fend for itself in the world of humans.

Tonight when we were having dinner, our host told us to be careful about snakes and scorpions around our house, which is half a kilometer away from the main building. The reason being that since there aren’t meerkats to eat all the bad things, the bad things like it there. As an afterthought, meerkats even eat mambas!

That’s all for now, Folks!