The peacelike mongoose
In cobra country a mongoose was born one day who didn't want to fight cobras or anything else. The
word spread from mongoose to mongoose that there was a mongoose who didn't want to fight cobras. If
he didn't want to fight anything else, it was his own business, but it was the duty of every
mongoose to kill cobras or be killed by cobras
"Why?" asked the peacelike mongoose, and the word went around that the strange new mongoose was not
only pro-cobra and anti-mongoose but intellectually curious and against the ideals and traditions
of mongoosism.
"He is crazy:" cried the young mongoose's father.
"He is sick," said his mother.
"He is a coward" shouted his brothers.
"He’s a mongoosexual," whispered his sisters.
Strangers who had never laid eyes on the peacelike mongoose remembered that they had seen him
crawling on his stomach, or trying on cobra hoods, or plotting the violent overthrow of Mongoosia.
"I am trying to use reason and intelligence; said the strange new mongoose.
"Reason is six-sevenths of treason," said one of his neighbors.
"Intelligence is what the enemy uses," said another.
Finally, the rumor spread that the mongoose had venom in his sting, like a cobra, and he was tried,
convicted by a show of paws, and condemned to banishment.
(Adapted from: James Thurber, Fables of our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, New York: Harper
Books: Harmondsworth 1965, p.287.)