Dear Ferret Folks-

We've had a lot of IMHO's recently about the ferret that apparently
ate the fingers off of the infant. I guess it's my turn to add my...
expertise? It does come from a peculiar direction.

As some of you may know I am an addict and alcoholic in recovery.
I've been at it in AA for 19 years. I know a lot about being totally,
absolutely wrecked. And you'd have to be *unconscious* to "sleep"
through a baby being devoured piecemeal in your home. The shrieking
would be really, really, annoying. You'd crawl over to the baby if you
could, not because you were concerned for it, but because you would
want it to shut up. Shut up *now.* This suggests to me that the parents
were too screwed up to crawl. It really sucks when the floor rocks like
the deck of a Naval aircraft carrier and pitches you onto your side
again and again and again. It's easier just to lie there and ride out
the buzz.

Now, that level of wastedness is harder to achieve than you might
think. Trust me on this. I'm thinking huge slug of narcotics on top of
a great deal of alcohol. Or, just a hellishly large amount of alcohol.
An amount large enough to render *both* parents unable/unwilling to
crawl to save their infant child's life. No matter how the chemistry
breaks down, these people were, as they say in the Big Book of
Alcoholics Anonymous, "boiled as an owl." Not just one of them, but
both of them.

I am glad that Social Services have taken the baby away. And no, I
don't find the parental story the least bit credible. I *do* find it
credible that these two charming people didn't have enough brain cells
to put together and yield something like compassion or elementary
responsibility as an end product. As in, I bet that ferret hadn't been
fed for weeks. It was starving to death. So it took advantage of a very
limited set of options. And who could blame it? A dog or a cat in the
same position would do the same. So did the folks in the Donner Party,
now that I think of it.

I am sure that as well as a necropscy on the ferret, the cops have done
a blood screen on the baby. Some addict/alcoholic parents don't see
anything wrong with slipping a baby half a bottle of that triaminic
syrup or bubble-gum flavored benadryl syrup to keep the child asleep or
completely passive, freeing the parents to party. Yeah, it kills the
occasional kid but the addict/alcoholic has strange priorities. Maybe
that baby didn't scream like a fire siren because it was drugged,
allowing the parents to "sleep" through the mutilation.

But yeah, I believe that a starving animal will feed itself by whatever
means necessary. I don't have a hard time imagining the presence of
precious, tiny fingers in the ferret's belly. They are really very
small, so small. I have kissed many a baby's small hands, and I
believe.

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 6951]