Dear Ferret Folks-
 
My ferrets have been very, very bad.
 
I used to have this wonderful rare, red amber necklace.  The beads were
not that common brown-yellow color, although that is a very fine color
indeed.  No, these were the color of the richest, most fragrant red wine.
 
When I held them up to the light they glowed as if they were lit from
within.  And amber should glow that way.  It's an ancient stone, made
from the sap of trees that basked in the sun tens of thousands of years
ago.  Trees whose life blood was distilled in their leaves during those
long-forgotten summers, captured sunshine.  Just imagine all that energy.
Imagine the warm, sticky resinous sap running down the bark and glowing
like a trickling chain of golden drops.
 
Today nuggets of amber wash up on the shores of the Baltic Sea and beach
themselves in the sand during violent storms.  When the rain is gone,
people scratch at the sand with long rakes, hoping for a flash of buttery
yellow, pale straw, clear gold, or glittering ruby.
 
The Baltic Sea.  Polecats have trotted it's shores for millennia.
Looking for a little of this, a little of that.  Something tasty to eat
perhaps.  My ferrets remember their polecat ancestry, and in that part of
their bones that is still all wild, and all polecat, they remember.
 
They found my necklace on their floor.  THEIR floor.  If it's on the
floor, it belongs to ferrets, right?  Those shiny, wine-red faceted
beads.  Strung so cleverly, so cunningly.  My glorious necklace, coiled
up upon itself, caught, and nested, I believe, like a jeweled snake in
the shirt that I had last worn them with.
 
They found it.  Sniffed it.  Their snouts filled with the resinous amber
smell and one of them (It was Lily!  I know it was Lily!) sniffed a
little longer than the other.  She tasted, and she remembered the
slate-gray Baltic beaches, and the bits of treasure that would wash up
there.  Gemstones for polecats to take in their mouths and run-run-run
for the shore and the tunnels, to stash this piece of sunlight, frozen in
time!
 
She brought it to a stash spot, this BAD ferret of mine, and there she
licked it.  Gently at first, but as she remembered her polecatness, she
bit, and bit hard.  And chewed.  And chewed some more.
 
So I still have a rare, red amber bead necklace.  But (Lily!  I know it
was Lily!) my ferrets have laid their own claim to it.  I held the broken
pieces in my hand for a long time tonight and mourned them.  Now they
once again resemble what they once were, little bits of treasure in the
sand, with tiny toe prints stretching back and away to the shore.
 
Alexandra in Massachusetts
[Posted in FML issue 4225]