Mmugosir

Ahh paghok nnisé, woh ttopoh keno maké mmugosir! *

When I was young I always heard about this creature called mmugosir, or more commonly known as mmugo, yet never questioned about it. Now that I'm older, I started wondering what the heck is a mmugosir?

My grandma would always complain that the fruits in her little orchard were always punoh habih maké ko mmugosir. And we would all just nod and sighed along, with nary an idea what sort of beast is this mmugosir.

Discussions with Kimi would always end up ngabé koksir and entailed a round or two of hysterics fits of laughter at our efforts to identify and give form to this mysterious animal. Usually such discussions would include another animal in - bokbong. I have a better idea of what that is, though I won't bet my life on it though. My best guess is bokbong = musang = a kind of civet. If I'm correct on that count, then why didn't they name Gua Musang as Gua Bokbong instead for the love of God? It's more interesting.

But I digress. Back to this semi-fantasy animal otherwise known as mmugosir, we finally decided to ask from the parents. But the answer given was not even half as interesting as the creatures we thought up in between the bouts of laughter. They said, a mmugosir is just a general word to denote any unknown animal. Yeap, killjoy.

I'm not Mmugosir!

I hope they're wrong though, at least so that I can keep wondering what sort of nocturnal, furry, ghastly creature that is so nasty that it has no qualms about stealing fruit from an old lady =P

* a literal translation would miss the mark, so what this phrase means is basically 'oh crap, the mmugosir ate the apples!