Reactions

Different people react differently to mongooses. We were returning from the field and met a group of children who were visiting Sandy Point and Buzz offered to show them a mongoose, but the woman who was directing the group (pictured here) utterly refused. Buzz was rather crushed, since he knows how much kids like to see mongooses: most of them have never seen one up close.

The next day, Mike Evans (the refuge manager) invited Buzz to explain the mongoose project to Ron Sharpe, US Attorney General of the Virgin Islands. While we were waiting for him to arrive, Buzz offered to show a mongoose to some of the other staff members, and they were all really excited. That's when I snapped this picture. Most people are really excited to see a mongoose — but not everyone.

People at Cottages are usually excited to see the mongooses. We had a group of 20-25 people the first time we brought them this year. We generally have interested people that stop by, until what we do becomes so routine that people don't even notice us bringing mongoose back.

I've been working on building a little documentary video about the mongoose trapping project. I've got about 25 minutes of raw footage, but I hope to trim it down to around 10 minutes -- the max you can upload to youtube without some special dispensation. Then we can see what reactions we get from all over the world.