Dear Ferret Folks-
 
This evening was change the paper in the corners of the Ferret Room
night, so I kicked the ladies out of their room and let them run around
the house.  I have to do that.  For some inexplicable reason they want
to keep their little sacred piles of waste.  They get very upset when I
roll up the paper and clean.  As soon as they see me coming with old
newspapers and a dustpan they get this really sour expression on their
pointy little faces.  It's like "Oh, man, here she comes again.  The
NERVE.  We finally got things smelling right and here comes the Hoomin.
Never fails.  Death and taxes.  You can count on 'em."
 
Anyway, once I was done (My sister helped me once and said afterwards
"And you *like* these animals?")  I sat down in the dog's velvety green
soft armchair in the living room to rest.  (She raised an eyebrow in
protest, but allowed me to stay where I was.)  I watched ferrets run
back, I watched ferrets run forth.
 
Then I watched Switch the Kit get mad at the bedroom door.  Why?  Because
it ws closed, of course.  No ferret can bear a closed door or a full cup.
 
She hunkered down and began to claw beneath it madly, digging deeply into
the carpet.  She inserted her head beneath the door with a mighty heave
of her haunches, then flattened out wider, and wider, and wider, and
finally extruded herself beneath the door entirely like so much gray
toothpaste.  With a tail.  Into the bedroom.
 
At one point I think that she was probably three quarters of an inch
high, and eight inches wide.  Flat, fat, ferret.  She made herself look
the way she would if I had shut her in the "A" volume of the Encyclopedia
Brittanica and piled volumes "B" through "Z" on top of her.  Very flat,
very fat.
 
You know, if I could pull off that same trick (wear a sweatsuit if you
do this, you'll need something with some give to it) I would wind up as
thick as a loaf of bread, and four feet wide.  With little fingers and
toes sticking out at both ends like fringe on a banner, no tail.
 
Would I fit beneath the bedroom door?  No.  But if I rolled myself
up like a carpet, I could probably fit on the bottom shelf of the
refrigerator.  (I'd have to clean it out first.  Who knew that an open
can of large, pitted black olives grows more valuable with time?  It
must, because I have one a year old down there, I 'm pretty sure.
(Gonna sell it on EBay, get rich.)
 
Oh, it was just a thought.
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 4483]