Yup, you read it right... boneless ferrets.  I have them you know.  It's
true.  Oh sure, they start off having bones but something happens right
after I pick them up... that's when they become boneless.
 
Chook is one of my oldsters, who just a year ago was fighting for his life.
He wouldn't eat or drink and ended up in the hospital for 3 days and 2
nights.  Since that time, Chook has recovered from his mystery illness and
has become quite chunky but solid this winter.  I remember back to a time
when I thought he wouldn't make it, but he showed me, and proved me wrong.
 
These days he follows me around waiting for a scrumptious taste of
something that might just happen to hit the floor in front of him, but
usually nothing happens.  So he takes a more aggressive stance by putting
those adorable little feet on my foot.  He's telling me he wants to be
picked up and I oblige him readily.  By the time I have him up to my chest,
he is curled in my arms and soooooo relaxed that I can form into a new
ferret type shape.  He is sooooooo relaxed that he feels boneless.
 
Some years ago, Gary Larson, famous for his Far Side cartoons in the
Saturday comics, as well as his other featured publications, had a cartoon
that has never left my mind.  It showed a farmer standing amongst a field
of chickens all lying on the ground.  The caption read, "Boneless chicken
farm."  It was such great inspiration that I laughed for years every time I
thought of it.  It was the this same inspiration that brought me to having
boneless ferrets.
 
Many of you have boneless ferrets... I know you do.  Mine, like many of
yours, get this bonelessness in their "sleep of the dead" mode.  They are
so floppy that you know there is nothing holding them together.  But then
the smell of linatone restores the bones back into the body and before you
know it, they can walk and run again.  Many other scents trigger the return
of the bones back to the body, but linatone is certainly one of the top
10.  Raisins are another.  Oh, and baby food is yet another.  Bob's Chicken
Gravy always seems to do the trick also.  And of course, red licorice.
 
I'm not ashamed of my boneless ferrets... I just wanted to be the first to
admit that I have them, and that it is okay.  My present 12 step program
is teaching me not to be ashamed of it any longer.  I have support from
friends and family and they tell me that it is okay too.  It is such a
relief to come out of the closet and admit it.  And I know that as fellow
ferret fanciers that I can get your support on this issue as well.
 
Wow, it feels so good to finally get this secret out into the open and off
my chest... although with Chook lying there, it does make it a little hard
to type.
 
Viva La Boneless Ferrets! Oh-lay!
 
Betty and Her Blur O'Fur 'n Fosters
[Posted in FML issue 2919]