Friday, April 26, 2013

The Literary Figures With the Weirdest Obsessions


By Emily Temple on Flavorwire - 



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Anton Chekhov
Chasing butterflies like Nabokov, raising peacocks like Flannery O’Connor, keeping bees like Ted Hughes – well, whatever. A real Bohemian needs a mongoose. Chekhov called his Svoloch and described it in a letter as “a mixture of rat and crocodile, tiger and monkey.” A snake showing up at a picnic was a special event. He kept it for about a year and a half, but, citing a need to travel, he then donated it to the Moscow zoo, which he had fiercely criticized as an “animals’ graveyard.” The mongoose lived in captivity for two more years. The average lifespan of a captive mongoose today is about 20 years.
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