Rikki-tikki-tavi Rikki-tikki-tavi from The Jungle Books, Volume two by Rudyard Kipling At the hole where he went in Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin. Hear what little Red-Eye saith: ``Nag, come up and dance with death!'' Eye to eye and head to head, (Keep the measure, Nag.) This shall end when one is dead; (At thy pleasure, Nag.) Turn for turn and twist for twist- (Run and hide thee, Nag.) Hah! The hooded Death has missed! (Woe betide thee, Nag!) This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting. He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits.

His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as he scuttled through the long grass, was: ``Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!'' One day, a high summer flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived with his father and mother, and carried him, kicking and clucking, down a roadside ditch. He found a little wisp of grass floating there, and clung to it till he lost his senses. When he revived, he was lying in the hot sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small boy was saying: ``Here's a dead mongoose. Let's have a funeral.'' ``No,'' said his mother; ``let's take him in and dry him.

Perhaps he isn't really dead.'' They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his finger and thumb, and said he was not dead but half choked; so they wrapped him in cotton-wool, and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and sneezed. ``Now,'' said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into the bungalow); ``don't frighten him, and we'll see what he'll do.'' It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is ``Run and find out''; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at the cotton-wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all around the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy's shoulder. ``Don't be frightened, Teddy,'' said his father. ``That's his way of making friends.'' ``Ouch! He's tickling under my chin,'' said Teddy.

Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and neck, snuffed at his ear, and climbed down to the floor, where he sat rubbing his nose. ``Good gracious,'' said Teddy's mother, ``and that's a wild creature! I suppose he's so tame because we've been kind to him.'' ``All mongooses are like that,'' said her husband. ``If Teddy doesn't pick him up by the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he'll run in and out of the house all day long. Let's give him something to eat.'' They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out into the verandah and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better. ``There are more things to find out about in this house,'' he said to himself, ``than all my family could find out in all their lives. I shall certainly stay and find out.'' He spent all that day roaming over the house.

He nearly drowned himself in the bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing table, and burnt it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy's nursery to watch how kerosene-lamps were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too; but he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend to every noise all through the night, and find out what made it. Teddy's mother and father came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. ``I don't like that,'' said Teddy's mother; ``he may bite the child.'' ``He'll do no such thing,'' said the father. ``Teddy's safer with that little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery now --- '' But Teddy's mother wouldn't think of anything so awful.

Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the verandah riding on Teddy's shoulder, and they gave him banana and some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one after the other, because every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a house-mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in, and Rikki-tikki's mother (she used to live in the General's house at Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came across white men. Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen. It was a large garden, only half cultivated, with bushes as big as summer-houses of Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, and thickets of high grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips. ``This is a splendid hunting-ground,'' he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden, snuffing here and there till he heard very sorrowful voices in a thorn-bush. It was Darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife.

They had made a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges with fibres, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried. ``What is the matter?'' asked Rikki-tikki. ``We are very miserable,'' said Darzee. ``One of our babies fell out of the nest yesterday, and Nag ate him.'' ``H'm!'' said Rikki-tikki, ``that is very sad --- but I am a stranger here. Who is Nag?'' Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss --- a horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail.

When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of. ``Who is Nag?'' said he. ''I am Nag. The great god Brahm put his mark upon all our people when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as he slept. Look, and be afraid!'' He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute; but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too, and at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid.

``Well,'' said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again, ``marks or no marks, do you think it is right for you to eat fledglings out of a nest?'' Nag was thinking to himself, and watching the least little movement in the grass behind Rikki-tikki. He knew that mongooses in the garden meant death sooner or later for him and his family, but he wanted to get Rikki-tikki off his guard. So he dropped his head a little, and put it on one side. ``Let us talk,'' he said. ``You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?'' ``Behind you! Look behind you!'' sang Darzee. Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. He jumped up in the air as high as he could go, and just under him whizzed by the head of Nagaina, Nag's wicked wife. She had crept up behind him as he was talking, to make an end of him; and he heard her savage hiss as the stroke missed.

He came down almost across her back, and if he had been an old mongoose he would have know that then was the time to break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of the terrible lashing return-stroke of the cobra. He bit, indeed, but did not bite long enough, and he jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving Nagaina torn and angry. ``Wicked, wicked Darzee!'' said Nag, lashing up as high as he could reach toward the nest in the thornbush; but Darzee had built it out of reach of snakes, and it only swayed to and fro. Rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and hot (when a mongoose's eyes grow red, he is angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind legs like a little kangaroo, and looked all round him, and chattered with rage. But Nag and Nagaina had disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next. Rikki-tikki did not care to follow them, for he did not feel sure that he could manage two snakes at once.

So he trotted off to the gravel path near the house, and sat down to think. It was a serious matter for him. If you read the old books of natural history, you will find they say that when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures him. That is not true. The victory is only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of foot, -- snake's blow against mongoose's jump, -- and as no eye can follow the motion of a snake's head when it strikes, that makes things much more wonderful than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose, and it made him all the more pleased to think that he had managed to escape a blow from behind. It gave him confidence in himself, and when Teddy came running down the path, Rikki-tikki was ready to be petted. But just as Teddy was stooping, something flinched a little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: ``Be careful. I am death!'' It was Karait, the dusty brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as dangerous as the cobra's.

But he is so small that nobody thinks of him, and so he does the more harm to people. Rikki-tikki's eyes grew red again, and he danced up to Karait with the peculiar rocking, swaying motion that he had inherited from his family. It looks very funny, but it is so perfectly balanced a gait that you can fly off from it at any angle you please; and in dealing with snakes this is an advantage. If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was doing a much more dangerous thing that fighting Nag, for Karait is so small, and can turn so quickly, that unless Rikki bit him close to the back of the head, he would get the return-stroke in his eye or lip. But Rikki did not know: his eyes were all red, and he rocked back and forth, looking for a good place to hold. Karait struck out. Rikki jumped sideways and tried to run in, but the wicked little dusty gray head lashed within a fraction of his shoulder, and he had to jump over the body, and the head followed his heels close. Teddy shouted to the house: ``Oh, look here!

Our mongoose is killing a snake''; and Rikki-tikki heard a scream from Teddy's mother. His father ran out with a stick, but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out once too far, and Rikki-tikki- had sprung, jumped on the snake's back, dropped his head far between his fore-legs, bitten as high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralysed Karait, and Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when he remembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose, and if wanted all his strength and quickness ready, he must keep himself thin. He went away for a dust-bath under the castor-oil bushes, while Teddy's father beat the dead Karait. ``What is the use of that?'' thought Rikki-tikki. ``I have settled it all''; and then Teddy's mother picked him up from the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved Teddy from death, and Teddy's father said that he was a providence, and Teddy looked on with big scared eyes.

Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the fuss, which, of course, he did not understand. Teddy's mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust. Rikki was thoroughly enjoying himself. That night, at dinner, walking to and fro among the wine-glasses on the table, he could have stuffed himself three times over with nice things; but he remembered Nag and Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be patted and petted by Teddy's mother, and to sit on Teddy's shoulder, his eyes would get red from time to time, and he would go off into his long war-cry of ``Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!'' Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikki-tikki sleeping under his chin. Rikki-tikki was too well bred to bite or scratch, but as soon as Teddy was asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house, and in the dark he ran up against Chuchundra, the muskrat, creeping round by the wall. Chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast.

He whimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but he never gets there. ``Don't kill me,'' said Chuichundra, almost weeping. ``Rikki-tikki, don't kill me.'' ``Do you think a snake-killer kills musk-rats?'' said Rikki-tikki scornfully. ``Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,'' said Chuchundra, more sorrowfully than ever. ``And how am I to be sure that Nag won't mistake me for you some dark night?'' ``There's not the least danger,'' said Rikki-tikki; ``but Nag is in the garden, and I know you don't go there.'' ``My cousin Chua, the rat, told me --'' said Chuchundra, and then he stopped. ``Told you what?'' ``H'sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. You should have talked to Chua in the garden.'' ``I didn't -- so you must tell me. Quick Chuchundra, or I'll bite you!'' Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers.

``I am a very poor man,'' he sobbed. ``I never had spirit enough to run out into the middle of the room. H'sh! I musn't tell you anything. Can't you hear, Rikki-tikki?'' Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as still as still, but he thought he could just catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the world, -- a noise as faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane, -- the dry scratch of a snake's scales on brick-work. ``That's Nag or Nagaina,'' he said to himself; ``and he is crawling into the bath-room sluice. You're right Chuchundra; I should have talked to Chua.'' He stole off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing there, and then to Teddy's mother's bathroom. At the bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled out to make a sluice for the bath-water, and as Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering together outside in the moonlight.

``When the house is emptied of people,'' said Nagaina to her husband, ``he will have to go away, and then the garden will be our own again. Go in quietly, and remember that the big man who killed Karait is the first one to bite. Then come out and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikki-tikki together.'' ``But are you sure that there is anything to be gained by killing the people?'' said Nag. ``Everything. When there were no people in the bungalow, did we have any mongoose in the garden? So long as the bungalow is empty, we are king and queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as our eggs in the melon-bed hatch (as they may to-morrow), our children will need room and quiet.'' ``I had not thought of that,'' said Nag. ``I will go, but there is no need that we should hunt for Rikki-tikki afterward. I will kill the big man and his wife, and the child if I can, and come away quietly.

The the bungalow will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go.'' Rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at this, and then Nag's head came through the sluice, and his five feet of cold body followed it. Angry as he was, Rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw the size of the big cobra. Nag coiled himself up, raised his head, and looked into the bath-room in the dark, and Rikki could see his eyes glitter. ``Now, if I kill him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight him on the open floor, the odds are in his favour. What am I to do?'' said Rikki-tikki-tavi. Nag waved to and fro, and then Rikki-tikki heard him drinking from the biggest water-jar that was used to fill the bath. ``That is good,'' said the snake. ``Now, when Karait was killed, the big man had a stick. He may have that stick still, but when he comes in to bathe in the morning he will not have a stick. I shall wait here till he comes. Nagaina -- do you hear me?

-- I shall wait here in the cool till daytime.'' There was no answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew Nagaina had gone away. Nag coiled himself down, coil by coil, round the bulge at the bottom of the water-jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an hour he began to move, muscle by muscle, toward the jar. Nag was asleep, and Rikki-tikki looked at his big back, wondering which would be the best place for a good hold. ``If I don't break his back at the first jump,'' said Rikki, ``he can still fight; and if he fights -- O Rikki!'' He looked at the thickness of the neck below the hood, but that was too much for him; and a bite near the tail would only make Nag savage. ``It must be the head,'' he said at last; ``the head above the hood; and when I am once there, I must not let go.'' Then he jumped.

The head was lying a little clear of the water-jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down the head. This gave him just one second's purchase, and he made the most of it. Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog -- to and fro on the floor, up and down, and round in great circles; but his eyes were red, and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap-dish and the flesh-brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath. As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honour of his family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, aching, and felt shaken to pieces when something went off like a thunderclap just behind him; a hot wind knocked him senseless, and red fire singed his fur. The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a shot-gun into Nag just behind the hood.

Rikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for now he was quite sure he was dead; but the head did not move, and the big man picked him up and said: ``It's the mongoose again, Alice; the little chap has saved our lives now.'' Then Teddy's mother came in with a very white face, and saw what was left of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged himself to Teddy's bedroom and spent half the rest of the night shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he was really broken into forty pieces, as he fancied. When morning came he was very stiff, but well pleased with his doings. ``Now I have Nagaina to settle with, and she will be worse than five Nags, and there's no knowing when the eggs she spoke of will hatch. Goodness! I must go and see Darzee,'' he said. Without waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki ran to the thorn-bush where Darzee was singing a song of triumph at the top of his voice. The news of Nag's death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown the body on the rubbish-heap. ``Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!'' said Rikki-tikki angrily.

``Is this the time to sing?'' ``Nag is dead -- is dead -- is dead!'' sang Darzee. ``The valiant Rikki-tikki caught him by the head and held fast. The big man brought the bang-stick, and Nag fell in two pieces! He will never eat my babies again.'' ``All that's true enough; but where's Nagaina?'' said Rikki-tikki, looking carefully round him. ``Nagaina came to the bath-room sluice and called for Nag,'' Darzee went on; ``and Nag came out on the end of a stick -- the sweeper picked him up on the end of a stick and threw him upon the rubbish-heap. Let us sing about the great, the red-eyed Rikki-tikki!'' and Darzee filled his throat and sang. ``If I could get up to your nest, I'd roll all your babies out!'' said Rikki-tikki. ``You don't know when to do the right thing at the right time. You're safe enough in your nest there, but it's war for me down here.

Stop singing a minute, Darzee.'' ``For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki's sake I will stop,'' said Darzee. ``What is it, O Killer of the terrible Nag?'' ``Where is Nagaina, for the third time?'' ``On the rubbish-heap by the stables, mourning for Nag. Great is Rikki-tikki with the white teeth.'' ``Bother my white teeth! Have you ever heard where she deeps her eggs?'' ``In the melon-bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun strikes nearly all day. She hid them there weeks ago.'' ``And you never thought it worth while to tell me? The end nearest the wall, you said?'' ``Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her eggs?'' ``Not eat exactly; no. Darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly off to the stables and pretend that your wing is broken, and let Nagaina chase you away to this bush.

I must get to the melon-bed, and if I went there now she'd see me.'' Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more than one idea at a time in his head; and just because he knew that Nagaina's children were born in eggs like his own, he didn't think at first that it was fair to kill them. But his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra's eggs meant young cobras later on; so she flew off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue his song about the death of Nag. Darzee was very like a man in some ways. She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish heap, and cried out, ``Oh, my wing is broken! The boy in the house threw a stone at me and broke it.'' Then she fluttered more desparately than ever. Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, ``You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have killed him. Indeed and truly, you've chosed a bad place to be lame in.'' And she moved toward Darzee's wife, slipping along over the dust. ``The boy broke it with a stone!

shrieked Darzee's wife. ``Well! It may be some consolation to you when you're dead to know that I shall settle accounts with the boy. My husband lies on the rubbish-heap this morning, but before the night the boy in the house will lie very still. What is the use of running away? I am sure to catch you. Little fool, look at me!'' Darzee's wife knew better than to do that, for a bird who looks at a snake's eyes gets so frightened that she cannot move. Darzee's wife fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and Nagaina quickened her pace. Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from the stables, and he raced for the end of the melon-patch near the wall. There, in the warm litter about the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of a bantam's eggs, but with whitish skin instead of shell. ``I was not a day too soon,'' he said; for he could see the baby cobras curled up inside the skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched they could each kill a man or a mongoose.

He bit off the tops of the eggs as fast as he could, taking care to crush the young cobras, and turned over the litter from time to time to see whether he had missed any. At last there were only three eggs left, and Rikki-tikki began to chuckle to himself, when he heard Darzee's wife screaming: ``Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina toward the house, and she has gone into the verandah, and -- oh, come quickly -- she means killing!'' Rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward down the melon-bed with the third egg in his mouth, and scuttled to the verandah as hard as he could put foot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and father were there at early breakfast; but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating anything. They sat stone-still, and their faces were white. Nagaina was coiled up on the matting by Teddy's chair, within easy striking-distance of Teddy's bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro singing a song of triumph. ``Son of the big man that killed Nag,'' she hissed, ``stay still. I am not ready yet.

Wait a little. Keep very still, all you three. If you move I strike, and if you do not move I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed my Nag!'' Teddy's eyes were fixed on his father, and all his father could do was to whisper, ``Sit still, Teddy. You mustn't move. Teddy, keep still.'' Then Rikki-tikki came up and cried: ``Turn round Nagaina; turn and fight!'' ``All in good time,'' said she, without moving her eyes. ``I will settle my account with you presently. Look at your friends, Rikki-tikki. They are still and white; they are afraid. They dare not move, and if you come a step nearer I strike.'' ``Look at your eggs,'' said Rikki-tikki, ``in the melon-bed near the wall. Go and look, Nagaina.'' The big snake turned half round, and saw the egg on the verandah. ``Ah-h! Give it to me,'' she said. Rikki-tikki put his paws one on each side of the egg, and his eyes were blood-red. ``What price for a snake's egg? For a young cobra?

For a young king-cobra? For the last -- the very last of the brood? The ants are eating all the others down by the melon-bed.'' Nagaina spun clear round, forgetting everything for the sake of the one egg; and Rikki-tikki saw Teddy's father shoot out a big hand, catch Teddy by the shoulder, and drag him across the little table with the teacups, safe and out of reach of Nagaina. ``Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk-tchk-tchk!'' chuckled Rikki-tikki. ``The boy is safe, and it was I -- I -- I that caught Nag by the hood last night in the bathroom.'' Then he began to jump up and down, all four feet together, his head close to the floor. ``He threw me to and fro, but he could not shake me off. He was dead before the big man belw him in two. I did it. Rikki-tikki-tchk-tchk! Come then, Nagaina, Come and fight with me. You shall not be a widow long.'' Nagaina saw that she had lost her chance of killing Teddy, and the egg lay between Rikki-tikki's paws.

``Give me the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, and I will go away and never come back,'' she said, lowering her hood. ``Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back; for you will go to the rubbish-heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The big man has gone for his gun! Fight!'' Rikki-tikki was bounding all round Nagaina, keeping just out of reach of her stroke, his little eyes like hot coals. Nagaina gathered herself together, and flung out at him. Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again and again and again she struck, and each time her head came with a whack on the matting of the verandah, and she gathered herself together like a watch-spring. Then Rikki-tikki danced in a a circle to get behind her, and Nagaina spun round to keep her head to his head, so that the rustle of her tail on the matting sounded like dry leaves blown along by the wind. He had forgotten the egg.

It still lay on the verandah, and Nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the verandah steps, and flew like an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her. When the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whip-lash flicked across as horse's neck. Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would begin again. She headed straight for the long grass by the thorn-bush, and as he was running Rikki-tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish little song of triumph. But Darzee's wife was wiser. She flew off her nest as Nagaina came along, and flapped her wings about Nagaina's head. If Darzee had helped they might have turned her; but Nagaina only lowered her hood and went on.

Still, the instant's delay brough Rikki-tikki up to her, and as she plunged into the rat-hole where she and Nag used to live, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail, and he went down with her -- and very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole; and Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and give Nagaina room to turn and strike at him. He held on savagely, and struck out his feet to act as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth. Then the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving, and Darzee said: ``It is all over with Rikki-tikki! We must sing his death song. Valiant Rikki-tikki is dead! For Nagaina will surely kill him underground.'' So he sang a very mournful song that he made up on the spur of the minute, and just as he got to the most touching part the grass quivered again, and Rikki-tikki, covered with dirt, dragged himself out of the hole leg by leg, licking his whiskers. Darzee stopped with a little shout.

Rikki-tikki shook some of the dust out of his fur and sneezed. ``It is all over,'' he said. ``The widow will never come out again.'' And the red ants that live between the grass stems heard him, and began to troop down one after another to see if he had spoken the truth. Rikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass and slept where he was -- slept and slept till it was late in the afternoon, for he had done a hard day's work. ``Now,'' he said, when he awoke, ``I will go back to the house. Tell the Coppersmith, Darzee, and he will tell the garden that Nagaina is dead.'' The Coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like the beating of a little hammer on a copper pot; and the reason he is always making it is because he is the town-crier to every Indian garden, and tells all the news to everybody who cares to listen. As Rikki-tikki went up the path, he heard his ``attention'' notes like a tiny dinner-gong; and then the steady ``Ding-dong-tock! Nag is dead -- dong! Nagaina is dead!

Ding-dong-tock!'' That set all the birds in the garden singing, and frogs croaking; for Nag and Nagaina used to eat frogs as well as little birds. When Rikki got to the house, Teddy and Teddy's mother (she still looked very white, for she had been fainting) and Teddy's father came out and almost cried over him; and that night he ate all that was givn him till he could eat no more, and went to bed on Teddy's shoulder, where Teddy's mother saw him when she came to look late at night. ``He saved our lives and Teddy's life,'' she said to her husband. ``Just think, he saved all our lives!'' Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for all the mongooses are light sleepers. ``Oh, it's you,'' said he. ``What are you bothering for? All the cobras are dead; and if they weren't, I'm here.'' Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself; but he did not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bit, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls.

Darzee's Chaunt Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book contains the perfect story. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. Last year, in the company of a nurse, a priest, and several homeless men and women from the streets of Boston, I went on a pilgrimage. A short odyssey of the soul: We walked out of the city for 60 miles, sleeping in churches on the way, heading for some friendly monks in West Newbury. One evening, at a church in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a priest who had just joined us offered to read everyone a story. We’d had a long day, we were sitting around rubbing our feet: It was a campfire moment, natural story time. But what story, which author? I was approached by one of my fellow pilgrims. “Tell him, don’t read something that’s all about God,” he whispered urgently. “Tell him to read something about, like, a coyote eating a rabbit.” I cherish that. It’s what fiction should be, basically, what it should be aiming at: the death-grip, the ultimate concern. The naked lunch. Or as Ted Hughes put it in “Thrushes”: No sighs or head-scratchings.

Nothing but bounce and stab/ And a ravening second. A bristling unbroken current of mongoose-osity. Rudyard Kipling was all about the ravening second. He called it “the undoctored incident”: Oh what avails the classic bent, and what the cultured word/ Against the undoctored incident that actually occurred? This is the wonderful thing about his Jungle Books, which function on one level as a moral primer for imperial schoolboys (Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout Movement, worked up his Cub Scout catechism from stories like “Mowgli’s Brothers”) and on another level, much deeper, as a sequence of bone-white existential tableaux featuring coyotes eating rabbits. Or tigers eating villagers. Or, as we will be discussing today, mongooses eating snakes. Advertisement Rikki-tikki-tavi, eponymous hero of the first Jungle Book’s best story, knows who he is (a house mongoose in India), knows what he’s for (killing snakes), knows his place, damn it, and a bristling unbroken current of mongoose-osity runs right down his ultra-flexible spine. “Rikki-tikki licked his lips.

‘This is a splendid hunting-ground,’ he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at the thought of it.’ ” Saved from drowning by a family who have just moved into a bungalow in the “Segowlie cantonment”—a fictional garrison for soldiers of the British Raj—Rikki-tikki becomes sworn protector of the household, and in particular of young Teddy, upon whose pillow he dozes at night, lightly and happily, springing to combat-readiness at the slightest sound. In the bungalow’s explosively fertile garden—“bushes, as big as summer houses, of Marshall Neil roses, lime- and orange-trees, clumps of bamboos and thickets of high grass”—Rikki-tikki encounters the local fauna, including a pair of nasty cobras, Nag and his wife, the lethal Nagaina. After scuffling with this assassin-couple and doing a bit of trash-talking, Rikki-tikki learns of their terrible snakey designs upon his beloved English people. (“Go in quietly,” Nagaina instructs her husband, by the sluice that leads into the bungalow’s bathroom, “and remember that the big man ...

is the first one to bite.”) So now it’s on: a fight to the death. “Kipling,” says a psychiatrist friend of mine, “was always pretending to be something other than he actually was—which was a 10-year-old boy.” His work, the best of it, has a boy’s barbarism and a boy’s conservatism. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” succeeds so spectacularly because it is, in a sense, written by that 10-year-old boy—by little Teddy, the quietest character in the story but the one with whose special boyish loves and terrors the narrative is saturated. The slithering menace to the family; the white, scared faces of the parents; the atavistic intercessor/guardian ... Of course “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” is also saturated with imperialist ideology, subduing the alien, etc., Rikki-tikki himself being the emblem of a kind of perfected native servant, house-trained but homicidally loyal.

But to read it as an authoritarian fable is to miss the real action of the story, which is down in the unconscious, down with the prima materia, down by the bathroom sluice, where the creepy-crawlies hiss and fiddle and not even Father, the big man, can keep you safe. Kipling was an instinctive anthropomorphizer—quite a heathen, in that way. He’d give a human personality as readily to a merchant steamer as to a mongoose. It’s the particular triumph of his animal characters, however, that they never become merely allegorical—or rather, they become allegorical while retaining their singularity and animality. Rikki-tikki in his violent happiness represents bravery and battle-joy and life-appetite, without ceasing for an instant to be a mongoose. Chuchundra the muskrat who creeps by the wall (“ ‘I am a very poor man,’ he sobbed. ‘I never had spirit enough to run out into the middle of the room.’ ”) is timidity itself, the unlived life, but he is also a wet-whiskered muskrat in a dark corner.

All of which brings us back to Kipling’s taste for immediate reality, for the ravening second and the undoctored instant. Get enough of that in there, by a paradox, and you will achieve true symbolism. Near the end of the story, having feasted murderously on 24 of Nagaina’s eggs (“He bit off the tops of the eggs as fast as he could, taking care to crush the young cobras ...”), Rikki-tikki returns to the veranda with the last egg intact in his mouth—a hostage. “Teddy and his mother and father were there at early breakfast, but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating anything. They sat stone-still, and their faces were white. Nagaina was coiled up on the matting by Teddy’s chair, within easy striking distance of Teddy’s bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro ...” The paleness and immobility of the humans, the fatal grace of the she-cobra, the suspended threat: It all seems to rise up, like a bad dream, from some prehistoric reservoir of fear.

In the event, at that church in Haverhill, our reader went with “A Father’s Story,” by Andre Dubus, which has a certain amount of God in it and no coyotes. We listened; some of us dozed, shallowly, like Rikki-tikki on Teddy’s pillow. It was a modest victory for literature. Dubus, whose grave is in Haverhill, entertained us in a serious way and perhaps enlarged us. But Rudyard Kipling, I do believe, would have eaten us alive. James Parker is a contributing editor at the Atlantic. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi from The Jungle Book Rikki-Tikki-Tavi from The Jungle Book or browse other Shmoopers' Questions In A Nutshell A sweltering jungle-covered land. Danger and intrigue lingering between ancient city alleys. Action and riches waiting for the most courageous of manly men. As a journalist for the Civil and Military Gazette in India (Intro.9-10), Rudyard Kipling spun popular tales of the "mysterious" land the British had come to know as the Orient.

His tales "impress[ed] upon the minds of Englishmen at home the almost divine necessity of maintaining the British Empire" ( source ), meaning, of course, India. So, naturally, Kipling was in India when his muse struck, right? He stared out his window at the rich jungle canopy and imagined what was occurring in that vast wilderness just beyond his grasp. Eh, not exactly. Actually, he was living in Vermont when he began writing The Jungle Books, one of his most famous works. In 1892, Kipling began projecting his mind away from the frigid Northeast winter and back to the warm tropics of India ( source ). He wrote these fantasies as short stories and sold them to various magazines. By 1894, he had written enough of the stories to combine them into a collection, which was titled The Jungle Books. Nestled amongst these imaginings of wolf cubs and tigers was a story about a little mongoose. Titled "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," after the story's furry protagonist, the story was a classic hero's tale shrunken down to critter size.

In it, the warrior mongoose Rikki-tikki matches himself in a mythic battle against the devilish cobras Nag and Nagaina in the back yard of an Indian bungalow. Although never as famous as Jungle Book alumnus Mowgli —whose combined tales take up eight of the total Jungle Books tales—Rikki-tikki has done fairly well for himself. Along with "Toomai of the Elephants," "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" is one of the few Jungle Books short stories to not feature Mowgli, yet still gain enough recognition to be printed outside the collection. And Kipling's story about a mongoose's backyard battle remains in print to this day. One hundred years after its first printing, "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" remains an inseparable part of the Jungle Books collection and has found a life of its own on many a child's bookshelf. Considering the average mongoose only lives to be twenty, Rikki-tikki is beating the odds in a major way. Why Should I Care? You know what the best part of a multiple-choice test is? So long as you answer, you've got at least a 25% chance of being right.

It sure takes a lot of pressure off filling in that little bubble—well, 25% less pressure. "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" is a lot like a multiple-choice test with one major difference. There's more than one correct answer to the question, "What's this story really about?" And your chances of getting the question right are way above 25%. (In fact, as long as you supply good evidence for your reading, we'll probably mark you at 100%.) So, get your #2 pencils ready: will it be (A) or (B)? (A) Many people read "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" as a classic hero's journey, only with anthropomorphic animals substituted for the people. The mongoose Rikki-tikki represents the knight protecting his personal Camelot (the bungalow) while the cobras could easily be substituted for those classic fire-breathing lizards of yore. (B) But others read "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" with what's called postcolonial theory . In that kind of reading, we'd focus on the colonial presence in Kipling's short story.

The British family is seen less as something in need of protection than they are an alien force in the garden. Nag and Nagaina are less villainous and more creatures trying to live their natural life, while Rikki-tikki loses the status of hero and becomes, instead, a loyal colonial subject. Of course, there are many, many, many different ways to read the story beyond these two, and that's why you should ultimately care about "Rikki-tikki-tavi." This short story demonstrates that no one way to read a story exists as the "ultimate" reading and can help free children and adults from the notion that there is a "right" way to read anything, especially literature. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi Summary - eNotes.com Rikki-Tikki-Tavi Summary link Link A song-like poem serves as prologue to ‘‘Rikki- Tikki-Tavi,’’ prefiguring the battle between the mongoose Rikki-tikki-tavi and Nag, the king cobra. The struggle between the mongoose and snake is the central focus of the story and the poem, which foreshadows the conflict but only hints at its resolution and creates a sense of suspense and expectation before the story even begins.

In the first paragraph the setting and the main characters are introduced: Rikki-tikki-tavi, who is established as the hero, with the help of Darzee the tailor-bird, fights a battle in the garden of a bungalow in colonial India. Rikki’s curious and energetic personality is also established. Rikki-tikki-tavi, washed by a flood from his parents’ home into the garden of a bungalow, lies unconscious in the garden path. Teddy, the boy who lives in the bungalow, happens upon him with his parents. They take him into the house and revive him. Rikki-tikki-tavi regains his energy and endears himself to the family with his energetic, curious, and friendly nature. That night he sleeps with Teddy, much to the consternation of Teddy’s mother. Teddy’s father reassures his wife that Teddy is safe with a mongoose because, as the natural predator of snakes, he would be able to protect Teddy if one were to enter the house: the expression of fear and the realistic threat of poisonous snakes foreshadows Rikki’s future conflict with the local king cobras. The next morning, Rikki explores the garden.

He meets the tailor-birds Darzee and his wife, who are mourning because Nag, the garden’s resident king cobra, ate one of their babies. As Rikki is conversing with the birds, Nag, who knows that Rikki the mongoose poses a mortal danger to him and his family, emerges to confront Rikki. He is described as ‘‘evil’’ and ‘‘horrid,’’ as well as foreboding in size and strength. Nag introduces himself as being marked by Brahm himself, the greatest god in the Hindu pantheon, creating a reference to the sacred status of snakes in Hinduism, the predominant religion of India. As Nag faces off with Rikki-tikki, Nag’s wife, Nagaina, makes a surprise attack on Rikki from behind. However, Rikki escapes unscathed because Darzee warns him in time. The snakes, defeated, retreat into the grass. Rikki, who has not fought snakes before, returns to the bungalow, feeling confident about his quickness against the snakes and gaining confi- dence in his skill. Teddy runs up the path to pet Rikki, only to be confronted by Karait, the ‘‘dusty...

(The entire section is 1052 words.) Get Free Access Start your free trial with eNotes for complete access to this resource and thousands more. 30,000+ Study Guides Save time with thousands of teacher-approved book and topic summaries. Get Homework Help Ask real teachers questions on any subject or search 300,000+ answers. On the Go Access Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi": Mixing Fact and Fiction | EDSITEment Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi": Mixing Fact and Fiction Tools Credit: Courtesy of Wikipedia , via EDSITEment reviewed Internet Public Library .

During the Victorian Era, British author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was both respected as a journalist and lauded as "The Poet of the [British] Empire." In his fiction, though, he blended the best of both skills and was ultimately awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas, and remarkable talent for narration which characterizes [his] creations." "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," a short story from The Jungle Book (1894), is an engaging example of Kipling's ability to mix scientific and historical fact with imaginative characterizations to create a believable and entertaining tale. In this lesson, students will use interactive materials to learn about Rudyard Kipling's life and times, read an illustrated version of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," and learn how Kipling effectively uses personification by mixing fact and fiction. Guiding Questions How does Rudyard Kipling mix fact and fiction to create the believable, engaging narrative "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"?

Learning Objectives After completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to: Identify key events in Rudyard Kipling's life and describe their effect on "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." Identify the geographical and social context in which "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" was created. Demonstrate comprehension of plot events and character motivations. Describe the author's purpose and evaluate the techniques used to achieve it. Identify and differentiate between facts and examples of personification. Preparation Instructions The Jungle Book including "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" with Drake’s original illustrations is available as an e-text through ebooks@Adelaide from The University of Adelaide Library Activity 3. Fact, Fiction, and Personification Activity 1. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's World To begin the lesson, share with your students the story's author and title. Tell them it comes from a collection of short stories called The Jungle Book and have them predict what the story might be about. As necessary, have your students define a story's setting as the time and place in which the events of a story happen.

Then read aloud with your students or have your students read the opening paragraph of the story: This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bathrooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the muskrat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting. He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. Have your students identify where the story takes place: the big bungalow in Segowlee (Sagauli) cantonment. Tell your students (or ask them, if they have the appropriate historical background knowledge) that Segowlee cantonment was a British military base in northern India (Bihar province). Have them locate northern India on National Geographic XPeditions's clickable online map or a classroom globe, and explain that Segowlee is located between the cities of Varanasi and Calcutta.

Explain to your students that while the author does not directly state in what year the story takes place, he does tell the reader indirectly when the events happen. Since Segowlee antonment was a British military base in northern India, the story must take place during a time when the British had military stations in India, when India was a British colony. Have your students explore The Timeline of British India available via the EDSITEment reviewed resource The Victorian Web to discover the name of the first British queen who was also the formal Empress of India (Queen Victoria) and the year in which she received the title (1876). Note: You may also wish to tell your students that, like the United States of America, India is no longer a British colony. India became independent in 1947. Next, tell your students that The Jungle Book was published in 1894 and have them note the story's publication in the correct place on the timeline. Inform them the name of the time period was the Victorian Era, and have them summarize the setting of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" as it is described in the opening paragraph: a house in northern India during the Victorian Era.

Then have your students read the biography of Rudyard Kipling , available from the Nobel E-Museum , a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets , and answer the following questions: What nationality was Rudyard Kipling? [Rudyard Kipling was British.] Where was Rudyard Kipling born? [Rudyard Kipling was born in India.] Why might Rudyard Kipling have chosen to set many of his stories in India? [Having lived part of his life in India, Kipling was likely familiar with its animals, people, and places.] Next, have your students name the animals Kipling describes in the first paragraph (mongoose, muskrat, tailor-bird) and tell them that the animals in the story are animals native to India. Then tell your students that, before reading, they are going to explore a resource on India to become more familiar with the land and animals of the country where the story takes place. Activity 2.

A Closer Look Have your students read the story "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." It is available online in The Jungle Book (chapter 9.) with Drake’s original illustrations is available as an e-text through ebooks@Adelaide from The University of Adelaide Library. When they finish, discuss with them the questions below. 1. How does Rikki-Tikki-Tavi help Teddy's family? Have your students summarize the events of the story individually or in groups by writing, putting story events in chronological order on a timeline, or retelling or acting out the story. 2. Why does Rikki-Tikki-Tavi help Teddy's family? How do you know? Explain which sentences in the story led you to draw your conclusion. Your students should understand that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi helps Teddy and his family both because the family is kind to him and because, as a mongoose, he instinctively kills snakes. Guide your students to find sentences in the story that show that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi stays with the family because they treat him well and that killing snakes, for which the family is so grateful, comes naturally to him. 3.

You have probably heard the phrase, "Actions speak louder than words." Read the following paragraph from "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi": He spent all that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself in the bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing-table, and burned it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy's nursery to watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too; but he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend to every noise all through the night, and find out what made it. What do Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's actions tell the reader about his character? What adjectives best describe Rikki-Tikki-Tavi? Why? Your students should conclude that because Rikki-Tikki-Tavi spends the day fearlessly exploring his new surroundings, he is curious or bold.

Encourage them to find another sentence in the story that supports their conclusion, such as, "It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity." 4. An author usually does not tell the reader that a character is wise, content, or brave. Instead, the author has the character's words and actions show the character's qualities. Read the following paragraph from "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi": That night at dinner, walking to and fro among the glasses on the table, [Rikki-Tikki] might have stuffed himself with nice things. But he remembered Nag and Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to be patted and petted by Teddy's mother, and to sit on Teddy's shoulder, his eyes would get red from time to time, and he would go off into his long war cry of "Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!" What conclusions can you draw about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi from his words and actions? Your students should understand that while Rikki-Tikki-Tavi enjoys the attention from Teddy's family, he does not lose sight of his goal.

Your students might describe Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as determined, responsible, or self-disciplined. 5. Find another place in the story where a character's words or actions show the character's qualities. You may wish to have your students work together as a class or in small groups to answer this question. If the students work together as a class, you might instruct them to find passages that describe a certain character; if they work in small groups, you might assign a different character to each group. To extend this activity, you might have each student draw a picture of his or her favorite character in the story and write a paragraph that describes the character, using evidence from the text to support his or her opinion. Have students compare and contrast the conclusions drawn by students who selected the same character, and guide them to understand that one reason why literature is so interesting is because readers can interpret a text differently. Activity 3. Fact, Fiction, and Personification Review with your students that a fact is a piece of information that is true and can be proven. For example, it is a fact that the United States of America and Canada share a border. Fiction, on the other hand, is invented, or made-up, information.

Stories about characters that do not exist (such as flying elephants) and events that never happened (such as an alien invasion of Earth) are examples of fiction. As a group, have your students make a list of sources of nonfiction and fiction information. For nonfiction, students might list newspapers, magazines, or encyclopedias; for fiction, they might suggest certain novels, comic books, or movies. Next, tell your students or have them find in the Nobel eMuseum's biography that Rudyard Kipling did both factual writing (as a journalist) and fictional writing (as a poet, short story author, and novelist). Then read the Nobel committee's award description , available through a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets , with your students and guide them to understand that the committee members particularly admired Kipling's ability to use facts in his works of fiction. Review with your students that "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" is a fictional story, because even though there are such things as cobras and mongooses, the story characters and events are made up. Then invite them to separate the facts from the fiction in Kipling's story.

First, have your students read a National Geographic entry on mongooses . Then have them look back through the text to find the examples Kipling included of actual mongoose characteristics and behavior, and record two or more in the appropriate box on the Fact or Personification? chart (PDF). Have them repeat the exercise for the cobra and tailor-bird . If you wish, have students complete the exercise in a large group, or individually or in small groups with a large-group presentation at the end.

Suggested Answers Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (mongoose) Lives in India, has a pink nose and eyes, has a fluffy tail, hunts snakes, lives in a burrow, eats meat, has a rocking gait when about to attack, makes a ticking sound when aggressive Nag and Nagaina (cobras) Live in India, hunt birds, have a hood with a unique mark, can "freeze" prey with their gaze, are poisonous, will bite humans, lay eggs Darzee and His Wife (tailor-birds) Live in India, build a nest by sewing leaves together with plant stalks or spider webs, build nests in shrubs, lay eggs, known for singing loudly Discuss with students the following question: Kipling includes many facts about the animals' appearances and behavior. Do the facts make the story more believable or less believable? Why? Your students should conclude that the facts make the story more believable.

Because Kipling frequently correctly describes the animals' appearances and behavior, their actions, though fictional, seem "real" or "true." Next, have your students describe the fictional elements in the story they noticed - have them explain what they know was "made up." Share each of the passages below, then ask your students to explain why the passage is an example of fiction. "That's Nag or Nagaina," [Rikki-Tikki-Tavi] said to himself; "and he is crawling into the bath-room sluice. You're right, Chuchundra; I should have talked to Chua." Animals do not have conversations like human beings do. A mongoose could not have a conversation with a muskrat. To assess students' understanding, you may wish to have your students find one or more other passages in which an animal talks like a human being. Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, "You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have killed him. Indeed and truly, you've chosen a bad place to be lame in." And she moved toward Darzee's wife, slipping along over the dust. Animals do not try to have their revenge on other animals; vengeance is a human invention.

A snake would hunt a bird for food, but it would not seek to kill the bird for revenge. To assess students' understanding, you may wish to have your students find one or more other passages in which an animal thinks or acts like a human being. Tell your students that giving human qualities to non-human characters (such as animals) is called personification. You may wish to underline the word "person" in personification and emphasize that to personify something is to give it human traits. Explain to your students that to have an animal think or talk like a human being, as exampled in the passages above, is to personify it. Then share with them the following example: Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled off his whiskers. "I am a very poor man," he sobbed.

"I never had spirit enough to run out into the middle of the room." This is the baldest example of personification in the text: though Chuchundra is a muskrat, when he talks, he refers to himself as "a man." Next, have your students return to the text to find examples of Kipling's use of personification for Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Nag and Nagaina, and have them record two or more on the Fact or Personification? chart (PDF). If you wish, have them complete the exercise in a large group, or individually or in small groups with a large-group presentation at the end.

Suggested Answers Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (mongoose) Talks with other animals, thinks of a plan to draw Nagaina away from the family at the table, worries that he will not be able to defeat Nag Nag and Nagaina (cobras) Talk with other animals, think of a plan to rid the house of human beings, seek revenge against the birds and the human beings Darzee and His Wife (tailor-birds) Talk with other animals, make up a victory song about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, help Rikki-Tikki-Tavi defeat the cobras Assessment When your students finish, discuss with them the following questions: You've seen how using facts in a fictional story makes this story seem more believable. Now think about how personification affects this story: does it make the story more or less interesting? How might the story have been different if the animals did not talk and think like people? Your students should conclude that the use of personification makes the story more interesting. Because the characters talk and think like people, the reader can understand and empathize with the characters' motivations.

Had Kipling not included the characters' speech and thoughts, the story still would have been interesting, but the reader would not have felt the level of intensity or suspense because he or she would not have been able to understand or empathize with the characters and their struggles. People have enjoyed Rudyard Kipling's works for more than 100 years. In fact, during Kipling's lifetime, people admired his poetry so much that he came to be called "The Poet of the British Empire." Think back over "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." Why did you enjoy Kipling's story? Have your students discuss the different things they enjoyed about "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." For example, some students might have liked learning new facts about the animals or setting, others might have appreciated the songs in the story, and still others might have found the characters or plot especially entertaining. You might also want to share your thoughts on the story during their discussion, both to model literature appreciation and to engage your students as a community of readers. Extending The Lesson Travel Back in Time!

EDSITEment resource the Victorian Web affords your students the opportunity to meet the luminaries of the Victorian Era (such as Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Ludwig von Beethoven, and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky), learn about the Victorians' daily life, try Victorian games and recipes, test their knowledge of the era, and even discover a 19th-century robot! What Next? If your students enjoyed "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," they might also enjoy the following works Additional stories from The Jungle Book with Drake’s original illustrations can be accessed as an e-text through ebooks@Adelaide from The University of Adelaide Library. Meet Rudyard Kipling's other famous characters, such as Mowgli, a boy raised by animals in a jungle, Baloo the friendly bear, and Shere Khan, the cunning tiger in this collection of stories in which "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" is also found.

Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling (Puffin Books, 1995) Rudyard Kipling himself illustrated this collection of his humorous tales, which includes "How the Camel Got His Hump," "The Beginning of the Armadillos," and "The Butterfly that Stamped." Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell (Random House Children's Books, 1993) In this classic story, a horse, Black Beauty, recounts the heart-warming and wrenching story of his life. The Incredible Journey, by Sheila Burnford (Yearling Books, 1990) Three house pets—a labrador, a bull terrier, and a Siamese cat—journey together across Canada to try to find their way home. You may be interested in the EDSITEment lesson on Beatrix Potter's Naughty Animal Tales . Selected EDSITEment Websites

Question: In Rudyard Kipling's story, what was 'Rikki Tikki Tavi'?
Answer: A MONGOOSE