With all of the amusing stories going around, I thought I would add
one.

We all know what it's like to have an ailing ferret at home and in a
home shelter enviroment it seems like someone is always in the TLC
cage. We had one little girl who couldn't use her back legs and the vet
thought it was either a spinal injury or a spinal tumor. Although she
had some special tazzie wheels she wasn't improving as much as I hoped.

Even though I wanted to rush right home from work, I had to stop and
pick up some necessary female items. As I rushed into the ferret room
to check on her I foolishly plopped down my purse with a plastic bags
on the little counter. Assured that she was ok, I cleaned her up a bit
and went out to the refrigerator to warm up some dook soup. It only
took me a few minutes to return to the room and upon opening the door,
broke out in hysterical laughter, dropped the soup and bent over
laughing more to the point of tears in my eyes.

Immediately my boyfriend clammored over to see what all the hysterics
were about and upon seeing the scene let out an audible "Oh my god!
Gross............."

There was Houdini, my special boy, standing in the center of a
demolished pink box with a "bone" of sorts in his mouth, string hanging
down, (sorry, but the visual makes the story) and surrounding him were
other "bones" strewn about with that "look what I did" proud look on
his face. Gazing across the room in the big dog sized water bowl puffed
up and floating were "life rafts" of sorts.

"That's so gross, how can you laugh at that?" my boyfriend replied.

How could I not laugh, in ten seconds Houdini had pryed open the pink
box, (which is glued together to highten an already stressed out woman
and is completely child proof), unwrapped it and was dancing with it
in his mouth. Here I was spending money on enrichment ferret toys and
he had decided these were the perfect size, came with crinkley paper
and since they were the "deoderant" type made his breath fresh.

It took me a while to sort through the ones that didn't have bite marks
on them ,(I couldn't just throw a whole box of a hundred away!)

Ever since then anytime I foolishly brought my purse in the ferret
room, zippers and snaps never detered Houdini of the treasure he
sought out.

Even though he is gone and at the bridge. Instead of tears, thoughts of
him bring a smile to my face picturing him with his "treasure" in his
mouth gleefully dancing. Even today his picture dons our website, as
our mascot. With feats like that, how could he not be.....

Diane W.
South Shore Ferret Care

[Posted in FML 6128]