RE:  Kelly's claim of ferret attempts at communication
 
I have one really weird story to tell and you guys are the only ones I can
trust not to laugh TOO hard at me...
 
Last year I was living in a large, two-story, three-bedroom apartment in an
old Victorian house, with two other girls and two cats, two gerbils, and a
Rottweiler, as well as my ferret, Mr.  Fuzz.  Since this was such an old
house, and had not originally been designed as apartments, the adaptation
process had left it with lots of nooks, crannies, hidey-holes, and closets--
the diametric opposition to "ferret-proof."
 
I normally kept Fuzz in my bedroom, but would let him out for a few hours of
supervised play at night.  If he got away from me (which invariably he did,)
he would generally hide out in the same two or three basic locations, from
which I would then have to extract him.  One night, however, I was on the
phone for longer than I expected, and Fuzz vanished.  I checked the normal
places.  I checked the abnormal places.  I even checked his cage (fat
chance, but I was grasping at straws here.) Both roommates helped me tear
the house apart, but I couldn't find him anywhere.  I was in tears by 2 a.m.
when I finally went to bed, convinced that he had somehow gotten into the
duct system or outside, cursing myself for my carelessness, and mourning the
apparent loss of my dear little friend.
 
A few hours later, I awoke suddenly from a sound sleep, sat straight up in
bed, and said, aloud, "He's in a box in the storage closet." I walked
directly to the closet, grabbed a large cardboard box with the flaps folded
together, inserted my arm, and pulled out Fuzz!  I took him back to bed with
me and didn't realize how odd the whole thing was until the next morning,
when my roommates wanted to know where on earth he'd been.  He had never
hidden there before, and with the flaps closed I couldn't see him.  But
somehow I knew that's where he was.
 
Since then, he hasn't disappeared on me, and he hasn't done any neat psychic
tricks either (he's more likely to steal spoons than bend them.) Still, I
have to wonder...  maybe he and I can get our own 900-number.
[Posted in FML issue 1374]