Dear Ferret Folks-

I've been on the FML for a few years now and I thought I knew its
habits, the same way you know a spouse's habits. A particular ferret's
habits...the rythmns and shortcomings, little quirks and peculiarities
that are like the places where time has smoothed soft curves into
angular wood. Your hands instinctively seek out those places. They
are known, and remembered.

I was wrong. Now I have truly, truly, seen everything.

I've been away on vacation for about two weeks, and off-line the whole
time. I only had a few hundred e-mails when I got back home. (I get
really testy when my inbox tops four hundred, but I got off light this
time.) I sort through them in a particular order every time I come away
from a long break. I delete all the spam. I read evertyhing that my
friends sent, and then...lastly....I sit down and read the FML's.

Why last? Because the task has historically been a little scary. I
ease into the back issues like someone trying to get into a tub that's
too hot. I stick in one toe, sloooowly, then try for a foot....another
foot...and hope for the best. "What will it be this time?" I think to
myself. Raw VS. Kibble? To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate? Shelter
Operator Slaughter? The Flame War that inevitably begins with the
phrase "I don't mean to be rude, BUT..." The one I call the Editorial
Flame War, when the angry person has not truly *read* someone's post,
but replies anyway, outraged over some imaginary shortcoming....There
is a virtual Whitman's Sampler of Flame Wars that we seem to enjoy
revisiting, us Ferret Folk. And like a real Whitman's Sampler, there
are always nuts, lurking in the box somewhere. (I know, I am one of
them. Apparently, I have a rich inner life that fearures talking otters
and flying tractors.)

Well, I started reading my FML's this morning. The first one was OK.
So was the second. And the third. And the next....and the next.....and
the next....True, there was the occasional oddity, but no armed camps
waging battle one against the other. No clink of metal armour, no
crowd of angry folk with burning torches and sharp pitchforks in their
hands running off to storm the castle, no armed warriors atop their
formidable War Horses, all wearing helmets with horns and carrying
spears. None a dat bidness.

I returned to peace. Quiet. Information being requested and generously
shared. Support in time of loss. Friendly advice, freely given.

Now, I am not saying that there were no problems behind the scenes,
the kind of stuff that BIG fields and we never see. But this *is* the
only time I have ever returned to the FML after a long break and *not*
returned to shattered cities, fleeing civilian populations, and salt
actively being plowed into the earth of captured fields.

It makes me highly suspicious. I suspect the FLO.

Alexandra in MA

[Moderator's note: Let's see... you go away for 2 weeks and the FML
stays quiet. What part don't you understand? ;-)  BIG]

[Posted in FML 5668]