Dear Ferret Folks-

I have been astonished by the number of kind messages that my husband
Dann and I have received on the loss of Ping. I have tried to thank
each and every sender personally but if I have inadvertently missed
anyone, please accept my sincere thanks now for your support. It really
helped. It made me feel much less alone with my sadness. There were a
lot of losses in the last week, not just mine, and I was especially
touched by the people who wrote to tell me that I was not alone. They,
too were grieving.

Losing Ping was so sad. And it was not a loss that only my husband and
I suffered. Puma really took it on the chin, too. Puma is very much a
stand on her own four feet kind of a weasel, but she was...diminished
by the loss of Ping. She spent a night searching the house from one end
to the other, looking for him, even though I had allowed her to sniff
Ping before we laid him to rest beside France, the Fricken' Pigmy
Hedgehog. When she couldn't find him she went silent. She walked around
like a ghost. She made me think of opening a drawer, finding it empty
except for a rubber band and a pen or two. Empty.

My husband said he just couldn't stand her silence, her stillness. Puma
is very much my husband's weasel. She hardly bites him at all although
she never misses an opportunity to nail me if she can. She latched onto
Risa DiVincenzo's throat at a MAFF picnic. She hung from Renee Down's
nose. She really, really wanted a piece of Bob Church, but he was too
fast for her. His Kung Fu was just too powerful for her, that day. I
think she dreams of a re-match.

My husband called me in the evening after work and said simply "I am
going to go look at the ferrets" at a particular store. I had been
thinking of looking at pictures of ferrets in shelters after deciding
that after Ping's horrendous loss, perhaps I really did deserve the
privilege of being a ferret Mommy again, but I planned on taking my
time. My husband is not known for patience. There is no such thing as
"just" looking at the ferrets in a place where they are sold when you
are bereaved and have a credit card. That's patently ridiculous. Me, I
quit drinking seventeen years ago. I don't just go "look" at beer in
the local package store. I don't go "look" at bars. There is no reason
for me to be at those places that is compatible with continued
sobriety. So I don't look.

My husband looked.

And, no surprise, he came home with a beautiful, dark, and lushly
whiskered fellow that I have named Todd, after my friend Todd Leuthold
who was murdered by crack thugs a year ago last month. He was only 50,
but he was a fragile diabetic and the beating he took killed him. The
thugs are in custody. They killed him for his new big screen TV, and
the money in his wallet. Every time my husband mentions the possibility
of getting a big screen TV, something in me rises up and snarls in a
purely primitive way. I would like five minutes with the thugs who Took
Todd from his little daughter and his friends. I don't need ten, five
would be quite sufficient.

Anyone who remembers Todd knows that he was a constant friend to
weasels. He called his the Fuzzbutt Rodeo Clowns. I took one look at
the ferret my husband brought home cradled in his hands, this ferret
with maybe the biggest butt I have ever seen on a weasel, and I thought
"This is a Fuzzbutt Rodeo Clown!" And so he is. After five months of
life in a cage, young Todd arrived not knowing how to dance, although
he had the heart for it. Now he has an entire house to play in, and as
my husband says, he is "learning his own dance." Precisely. Young Todd
is growing into his dance, learning how best to throw his head around
for pure joy and dook from his soul.

A dance is a very personal thing. I feel, at forty-three, that I am
just growing into my own dance. It is uniquely mine, and I hope that
it has very little in it of personal regret and pain that should have
long-since been discharged. I hope that it gives every appearance of a
joyous moment, and that it entertains. My friend Todd was, I believe,
just coming into his proper dance after a number of miss-steps that
caused not only himself but others substantial pain. He was getting
into the feel of it, the rhythms of joy and earned satisfaction in
obstacles overcome. And then, he was stilled forever.

Perhaps Todd would forgive me for the endearment I give to his
name-sake. I call him...Chunky-Butt. But only when Puma is not
listening. Puma, for her part, has come alive again. She grooms Todd
from tail to ears, and snuggles against him each night. They engage in
loud, rompin' stompin' play. The noise is unavoidable, Todd is built
like a loaf of sandwich bread and weighs three times what she does.
(Please don't throw lightning bolts down on me from the afterlife,
Todd, for saying so but...um..young Todd greatly resembles you in form.
There is a reason I call him Chunky-Butt.) And every day, he grows a
little more into his dance. May all of you find and embrace your
personal dance if you have not already done so. The rhythm is there,
you just have to give yourself to it.

Alexandra in Ma

[Posted in FML 6084]