Rudyard Kipling: Poems
Rikki Tikki Tavi
how did Rikki tikki come to live with the english family?
how did Rikki tikki come to live with the english family?
Rikki Tikki was washed out of his home be a summer flood and founf by a little boy. The boy and his mother took him home to care for him.
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 over a little fire, and he opened his eyes and sneezed.
Rikki Tikki Tavi