NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 
suffered losses of poultry at intervals for a year or 
more. ‘Thinking that wild.cats caused the damage, 
he set poisoned bait and traps, but without success. 
One night a half-grown turkey was killed and 
partly devoured. Recognising the spoor as that of 
a mungoose, we decided to lie in ambush just before 
dawn, as I predicted the animal would return just 
after daylight when the poultry came down from 
their tree perches. I was aware a mungoose could 
not have climbed after them, so naturally the in- 
ference was that it had been in the habit of surpris- 
ing them at daylight. This proved to be so, for 
presently we heard a sharp, suddenly stifled cry 
from a fowl, and saw a struggling hen whose neck 
was in the jaws of a Water Mungoose. Needless 
to say the mungoose did not live to witness another 
dawn. After we had finished our breakfast we sum- 
moned all the farm hands and. dogs and proceeded 
to the adjacent river (Umsindusi), and eventually 
succeeded in killing another, presumably the mate, 
as well as three half-grown specimens. 
From glands situated under the tail the Water 
Mungoose, when alarmed or seized by an enemy, 
excretes a fluid which has what might be called a 
sweetish, nauseating odour, something akin to the 
combined odour of musk and putrid cabbages. 
In the neighbourhood of Port Elizabeth this 
mungoose is common. One was actually captured 
in a patch of scrub near the spruit known as 
Baaken’s River, where it flows through the town to 
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