One night I heard some rustling in the undergrowth of my garden in Jakarta so went to get my little rat trap to catch the beggar. I went out with it and quietly approached the bush from which the noise was coming.
Do you remember the scene in Jaws when the police chief is throwing out chum to attract the shark and the Great White appears? The Chief backs off shakily, slack jawed and says “I think we need a bigger boat”.
That was me when the civet cat came sniffling out at me from the hedge. I’d never seen one before and to confront one at ten pm at night face to face came as a bit of a shock.
When I had calmed down after a stiff drink my wife explained I hadn’t encountered Ratzilla but a “mussang”, which a bit of research confirmed was a civet cat. He became quite a feature of the garden, walking along the wall at night before climbing on to the mango tree to eat the fruit.
I contemplated catching him to feed him coffee beans to sell to dumb people at a hundred bucks a pound but thought better of it.
Fun story, thanks for telling :-)
They're gorgeous animals but if you were expecting something far smaller it's easy to see how you'd be surprised ;-)