Dear Ferret Folks-

Today, my husband and I are both sick. Last weekend we invited both of
our little three year old nephews over to our house for a sleep over,
and one of them (Richard) left a little something behind. Is it SARS?
The Bird Flu? The Black Death of Europe? (I never got this sick when I
had Norway Rats, but I deny EVER having had fleas!) Little Richard's
button nose ran and ran. We finally gave him his own private roll of
toilet paper to tote around because I just couldn't stand watching him
wipe his nose on his Spiderman shirt. The little guy's upper lip was so
red and raw he looked he had a mustache, sort of like a toddler Hitler.
He was miserable.

And now I am miserable. This morning I let Ping and Puma loose to run
around. I keep them in their cage at night when I can't monitor things.
The rest of the time they are pretty much free to do what they want.
(Someday we will build a ferret room on this new house. Until then,
we are all making do.) I made a pot of coffee, and shuffled into the
bathroom to do the sort of thing that people do in places like that. I
was sick. I was tired. I was seated. Ping, ever chipper in the morning,
decided to climb up the legs of my long underwear and explore my lap.
Now, on a normal day I would have punted him into the laundry basket
for this transgression of my privacy and my person but I was sick. I
was miserable. I was literally, too sick to fight back.

Ping stood on my thighs and walked his front paws up my belly and
chest, sniffing. I looked down and there was that happy, happy face.
"Good morning! I'm climbing on you!" I moaned a little.

"Go 'way."

Ping did not go away.

Ping dug his front claws into the fabric of my long underwear top and
heaved himself up to my shoulders, walked across the back of my neck.

"Go 'waaaay, Ping."

Ping did not go away. Instead, he happily inserted his pointy head into
the fall and tangle of my long hair, and immediately became stuck in
it. So he had to thrash around a whole lot. I had to reach both arms
over my head and grab him, try to extract the ferret without snatching
myself bald headed or strangling Ping, which didn't sound like a really
bad idea at just that moment. It had a raw sort of appeal that I am not
at all proud of, but not yet having had that first cup of coffee might
have had something to do with it.

I finally brought Ping around to hang, just inches from my face in
my two hands. He looked up at me with that relentlessly cheerful
expression, back legs sprawled at right angles to his belly. "That was
so much *fun*, hoomin, let's do it again!" I sighed deeply and finally
did what I should have done in the first place, gently tossed him into
the pile of laundry on the bathroom floor. Should have. But I was Too.
Sick. To. Fight. Back.

I've got a mammogram in a few days and I wonder what the technician
is going to make of the crosshatching of small scratches over the top
of my shoulders. I'm a pirate and that's where I keep my parrot? My
partner and I are into S&M and we use a travel sized pencil-slim
cat-o-nine tails while we are on the road? I'm a homeless person really
into fitness, so I do my yoga poses over the steam grate I live over in
the winter?

I will never tell.

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 5546]