Dear Ferret Folks-
 
I wish that I could show you all the look of perplexity and indignation
that I saw on Switch the Kit's pointy little face last night.  It was a
scorching look that could have made ordinary houseflies burst into little
flaming missiles had any been around, it could have made the ferretone
bottle swell and burst like a hand grenade!
 
What so provoked her?  A cheap cat toy that I bought at Walmart yesterday.
It is a large fur mouse attached to a five-foot long elastic cord.  It
hangs from the top of a door, and costs $1.97.  It makes ferrets lose
their tiny minds.
 
Switch adores fur mice.  She picks them up and immediately stashes them
underneath the bureau, or inside her crinkly aluminum dryer hose.  She
grabbed this one (a BIG one) and ran for the bureau.  Fine and dandy.
Only as soon as she let go of it, the elastic cord it was attached to
snapped back, and flung it back across the room at high speed.  (Here
you need to imagine the appropriate Bugs Bunny sound effect...
Booooiiingg!)  She blew out from under that bureau and just stood there,
legs and tail flung out like the five pointed arms of a starfish, in mute
astonishment... no fur mouse had ever, ever fought back before!
 
So she ran and did it again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  For TWO
HOURS, until she had to take little breaks to lie down on her side and
pant because she was exhausted.  Booooiiingg!  Booooiiingg!  Booooiiingg!
 
I watched for a while, but even while I was doing other things around
the house I could hear the fur mouse snapping on the end of it's elastic
and rappelling off of solid objects, mostly the door and the baby gate.
There was one time that I heard something really bizarre that I couldn't
identify.  I went to look into the ferret's room, and the crinkly aluminum
dryer hose, all five feet of it, was piled in a heap at the base of the
door.  She must have tried running inside the hose with the fur mouse in
her mouth, then she let go.....Booooiiingg!  Smack!  Thwap!  What a god
awful racket that made.  I wonder if she was expelled from the end of the
hose like a pissed-off cannon ball?  Her fur was in total disarray, she
looked like a gray, furry umbrella that had been blown inside out in a
windstorm.
 
Sabrina the Bat-Biter only watched long enough to see the first tug and
snap.  Then she looked at Switch wrestling this thing, and gave her a
look like "Oh, you are such an idiot."  Then she went off for a nap at
the back of the closet.
 
It was $1.97 well spent.
 
Sincerely,
Alexandra in Massachusetts
[Posted in FML issue 3751]