Haven't caused any controversy for a while so I thought I'd write in.  Here
is a true story :
 
We have a ferret called stinky who has the run of the whole house and more.
When I say the whole house I mean it.  Under the house, the fireplace, the
fridge, the chicken shed, through the odd hole in the floor, in my mattress
etc.  Our house is very old and it is a ferrets dream, as it can go anywhere
at anytime because of all the holes.
 
We considered that the ferret and the chickens may have conflicted slightly
as feral ferrets over here do occaisonally raid chicken coops kill all the
birds.  But we thought if we fed stinky there wouldn't be a problem.  Then
one of our chooks was killed and we found it headless under the shed.  We
strongly suspected stinky.  However, two nights later there was a tremendous
squeaking coming from the bathroom, I opened a cupboard (which leads to
under the house) and there was stinky having a fight with a feral ferret.
 
I thought it best not to rescue stinky or scrag the feral beast as they
where already fighting, so I went to get a cage and some gloves.  I came
back and the feral beast was gone.  It reappeared later in our kitchen and
ran out the cat door when it saw me coming.  It had been eating out of our
rubbish bin and the animals food bowl.  We then decided that the feral
ferret must be removed permanently.  We put the cat door on to "one way" so
animals can only come in and not go out again.
 
At six in the morning we checked out the kitchen, and sure enough the feral
beast was there.  When it saw us it ran straight at the cat door with so
much force that it took the cat door off the hinges and disappeared.
 
That morning we let the cat and our ferret back in the house and watched as
stinky slinked over to the cat to play.  The cat hissed, spat and then ran
away, we figured that the cat must have tried playing with the feral beast
and got the fright of its life.  The next night my flatmate caught the feral
critter in a cage and reintroduced the cat to stinky and the wild ferret so
the cat (spud) could see the difference.
 
Its back to "the itchy and scratchy show" between stinky and spud with much
fighting and biting, the feral ferret has been relocated elsewhere.  We
await the next one......
 
Before I go, I need to know how to get rid of the stink from stinky, as it
can be overwhelming and transmittable at times, does bathing not work for
anyone else, or am I doing something wrong ?
 
                                  Jim Young
[Posted in FML issue 1888]