THE BUSHY-TAILED OR ROOI MEERKAT 
for fowls’ eggs and chickens. Unlike the muishond, 
it rarely ventures into fowl-houses. The eggs it 
levies toll upon are these laid by hens out in the 
bushes or grass some distance from the homestead. 
When a hen ventures too far out on the veld with 
her chicks, a few are snapped up. When dogs are 
kept at the farm this meerkat always keeps at a 
considerable distance, as it has a wholesome dread 
of these animals. 
It has, however, acquired the evil practice on 
some stock farms of killing small lambs. The 
lamb is seized by the nose by one or more meerkats, 
and slowly dragged to the burrow. Should it fall 
exhausted on the way, the flesh on its face is eaten 
off. Dead lambs have been found with the head 
and neck down the meerkats’ burrows. Lambs 
bitten by these meerkats nearly always pine and die. 
From a sportsman’s point of view this meerkat 
does a good deal of harm in eating the eggs and 
young of game birds. The various species of 
bustard (Paauw and Korhaan) suffer to a consider- 
able extent, for the reason that they inhabit the 
districts most frequented by the Bushy-tailed 
Meerkat. This meerkat does not make a very 
interesting pet in captivity. It is shy, suspicious, 
and cunning, and has none of the interesting and 
comical ways of its cousin the Slender-tailed Meer- 
kat. If captured when already adult, it can never 
be satisfactorily tamed, but if caught young it soon 
loses its dread of man, and will allow itself to be 
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