The Crooked Man
It's Christmastime as I write this, and time for us to talk about that poor boy from Bethlehem in Judea, the one who comes in answer to prophecy and who will later be called King of the Jews. But not the one you might assume -- I mean David, son of Jesse.
There are plenty of references and allusions to Jesus in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes (and there's a topic for another time) but in The Crooked Man, a connection is explained between events in the story and an ugly episode in the career of King David. In fact, one Bible scholar refers to this particular act of David's as "the most sinful deed in a sinful life." Too harsh? Decide for yourself – Holmes doesn't know the exact citations but I can tell you the whole saga may be found in the 11th chapter of the Second Book of Samuel. The world-shattering consequences are recorded in ... well, throughout the entire remainder of Jewish history.
Cute and Cuddly Teddy
Cartoonist Walt Kelly once quipped that "a mongoose is a singular creature because nobody can say two of them." It is tempting to think that the plural would be "mongeese," so just for fun I looked the word up online, confirming that you do say "mongooses."
And in the process I learned a lot of other interesting things. (Ain't the World Wide Web grand?) One of the first things I learned was that Teddy's not a mammal at all -- but an insect!
Bet that got your attention...
No, of course a mongoose can't be an insect – but at first it appeared the internet sources were telling me just that. Here's the scoop:
Teddy, our hero tells us, is an ichneumon. Watson identifies this as another name for mongoose – but I searched for "ichneumon" first and learned that technically this name refers to a group of several thousand species of parasitic insects.
The encyclopedia entry I found said "ichneumons are worldwide in distribution and are economically important because their larvae feed on and destroy insects injurious to humans, especially moths. The larvae also feed on many harmless and some helpful insects, including other species of valuable ichneumons; the last-named parasites are themselves sometimes parasitized by still other species."
I also learned that the insectine ichneumons have some particularly disgusting reproductive habits, which I won't tell you about.
But having said all that, why in the world is our mongoose identified as an insect? That, as it turns out, is one of those charming little quirks of scientific nomenclature – a reminder that zoologists and biologists are people too.
See, mongooses subsist on rodents and snakes and are renowned for attacking even the largest and most poisonous snakes—to whose poison they are not immune, by the way —by an agile avoidance of their strikes. This naturally makes them very handy to have around, especially if you live someplace where cobras are likely to come calling.
And because of this similarity to the nice ichneumon bugs that eat the mean bugs, this particular species of mammal gets dubbed "ichneumon" as well. Makes sense, no?
Maybe you'd like to have one as a pet! Well, forget it ... importation of mongooses into the United States is prohibited because they also destroy many useful animals.
Mongooses live about 7 to 12 years in the wild, the encyclopedia says, but in captivity they may live to more than 20 years. Happily, this would have given Teddy plenty of time to be the faithful comrade of The Crooked Man ...