When I was a kid, one of my favorite animated specials was Chuck Jones’ “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” Rudyard Kipling’s story about a mongoose protecting a family from a pair of nefarious cobras enchanted my ...

There’s one in every playground: the hyperactive kid who doesn’t mean to offend, but drives everyone else to distraction. In “The Garden of Rikki Tikki Tavi,” it’s not a child, but a mongoose. Y ...

In India, the lightning-fast gray mongoose is revered as a hero because it fearlessly takes on the venomous hooded cobra in fights to the death. And in Frederick, a little gray mongoose named Rikki ...

Kipling’s Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a gallant little mongoose, loved everything but snakes. His great enemies were the cobra family. Rikki was contemptuously friendly with Chuchundra, a muskrat, and on fair ...

Last year, in the company of a nurse, a priest, and several homeless men and women from the streets of Boston, I went on a pilgrimage. A short odyssey of the soul: We walked out of the city for 60 ...