Meta: “The mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by…”

Hannibal sometimes plays out like a fable, and one of the ways that the show likes to try and articulate the relationship
between Will and Hannibal is through animal forms.

Hannibal’s line is adapted from Red Dragon. Specifically, Freddie Lounds’s Tatler article about Will Graham seeking help
from Hannibal to catch another serial killer:

“One New Or leans officer who ser ved with Gr aham commented, “Well, you can call him r etire d, but the feds like to know he’s around. It’s like having a king snake under the

house. They may not see him much, but it’s nice to know he’s there to eat the moccasins .”

Water moccasins are a dangerously venomous North American species of snake. King sna kes prey on them, and other
snakes, and are immune to their venom. The interesting part is that Bryan Fuller deliberately changed this from Will the
“king snake” and the serial-killer “moccasins” to a mongoose and snakes.

(Bonus: baby mongooses! I think they have Will Graham’s eyes.)

Mongooses are, famously, snake-predators. Several species have evolved to be particularly adept a t it: they have a thick
hide that’s difficult to puncture, they’re ferociously agile, and they’re almost immune to snake -venom because they have a
uniquely mutated receptor for acetylcholine, a brain neurotransmitter. Snake venom usually binds to the acety lcholine
receptors in the bodies of victims, paralysing them. In mongooses, the mutated receptors cause the venom to simply
bounce off the cells, preventing any harm.

The grey mongoose can even defeat a king cobra, probably the most venomous snake in the w orld (can kill a human in 15
minutes, an elephant in an hour), but it typically avoids them and doesn’t enjoy eating their meat. In a fight like that, the
cobra and the mongoose will stare each other down before attacking; but when it comes to blows the mo ngoose is
lightning-quick and ruthless. (Video of a mongoose taking down a king cobra.)

Some species of mongoose are resolutely solitary, hunting down food only for themselves. They look dark and grizzly and
are highly intelligent; but they are vicious—humans used to pit them against snakes in arenas for bloodsport.

The reference might be to “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”, which is a story in Kipling’s The Jungle Book about a brave mongoose kept
by humans to protect their house, who fights and defeats a wicked king cobra called Nag.

However, I think a more relevant story that captures what Hannibal is t rying to imply is the Arabic fable “The Faithful
Mongoose”, which was the inspiration for Kipling’s story. In that tale, a man goes on a long journey, leaving behind his
pet mongoose to guard his infant son. A venomous snake sneaks into the man’s home but is killed by the mongoose. When
the man returns home, the mongoose eagerly rushes to greet him. At the sight of blood on the face and hands of the
mongoose, the man believes that the mongoose has killed his son and he kills the mongoose in his fury. But wh en the man
goes into the house, he finds his son sleeping peacefully, and the dead snake lying beside the cradle.

The moral of the story is that in order to kill dangerous enemies, you must yourself become dangerous; and there is always
a possibility that you will be mistaken for the thing you’re trying to kill.

Hannibal is telling Will that he is perfectly adapted to this task, that he is the best predator imaginable for this dangerou s
prey, and resilient against any harmful effects that this exposure mi ght cause.

However, he is implying that although Will is a fundamentally different creature to the killers that he hunts (“psychopaths
and sociopaths”, according to Jack), he is not so very different from them in instinct and thought. To the FBI who hire
him, he may start to resemble the threats he’s meant to be hunting —which is what Hannibal hopes for.

Perhaps also worth mentioning: the Arabic fable later inspired Bram Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm, a gothic horror
novel whose titular monster is a giant snake. In the book, the protagonist Adam Salton inherits an estate and finds that it’s
overrun with black snakes. He buys a mongoose to hunt them. The mongoose instead attacks a local woman, Arabella, and
is shot dead; but it’s later discovered that t he White Worm has been living out of Arabella’s house and that Arabella has
been feeding it people.

Here, the mongoose alone instinctively knows that Arabella is the killer, but its attack on her is initially condemned as
vicious; it is only later vindicated after it is dead and Arabella has been defeated.

So Will is ostensibly there to hunt “snakes”; but Hannibal is perhaps hoping that he’s clever enough and perceptive enough
and dangerous enough to see the real evil in front of him.

MONDAY, 24TH OF JU NE, 2013 WITH 358 NO T E S

#hannibal #hannibal meta #will graham #hannibal lecter #mongooses! #a lot of you wanted the mongoose
rebloggable so... here you go #i think you people have a mongoose problem #just sayin'