Once upon a time, there was a very small - and very bad ferret whose name
was Odie.  He really was small, but he really wasn't all that bad.  He just
liked to get into things and have a good time with them.  He seemed to be
posessed by a particular joy of life that many folks just could not
understand.
 
His penchant for fun had gotten him into trouble many times.  His life had
begun in a cage in New York.  He often drempt of the happy times he spent
there with his mother, brothers and sisters.  He often chuckled at the
trouble he had gotten them all into with his spirit of adventure and fun.
 
Time went by and Odie found himself in a place called Illinois.  He was
happy there for he was loved and had many good friends to play with and to
get into trouble with.  He often drempt of his mother and the happy days of
his kithood.  He also began to dream those other dreams.
 
More time went by, as it always does, and Odie found himself living at a
University in the state of Georgia.  He liked it there, applied himself to
his studies and became a very educated ferret.  He also managed to have a
very good time and to get into lots of trouble.  Every night he dreamed
those other dreams.  They were becoming more and more real to him.  Visions
of fig trees and of desert sands remained with him long after he awoke each
morning.  He frequently thought that he could still hear the sound of a
baby's cry as he made his morning rounds and woke up his Dad's roomates.
 
By and by, he found himself living in another place.  He wasn't sure why
he'd had to move, but figured that it had something to do with the fact that
he was being bad and becoming unmanageable - whatever that meant.  It wasn't
a bad place.  Actually, he came to like it very much.  It was the home of a
kindly old couple, if you could discount the fact the Old Man did get
grouchy now and then.  It was also the home of a good natured young ferret
by the name of Tater.  Odie quickly decided that Tater was one of his
long-lost brothers from that place in New York.  It didn't matter to him
that it might not be so.  He decided that truth should never get in the way
of a good feeling.  Odie was happy and content.  Even so, his dreams of
another place and another time did not cease.  He'd frequently wake up with
the feeling that he'd been on a very long journey through a hot and barren
desert - whatever a desert might be.
 
It was on a Thursday afternoon, late in the month of November, that
everything began to fall into place for Odie.  The humans had cooked the
largest bird that he had ever seen; stuffed it with wonderful and tasty
things.  He and Tater had eaten themselves to the point of bursting with a
wonderful new food called 'leftovers'.  All was right with the world.
 
The humans, it seems, had also eaten themselves into a similar state of
stupor.
 
"I'm so thankful," Odie thought as he settled into the old man's lap for a
well deserved nap.  "Thankful to be who I am; thankful for a full belly of
tasty stuff; thankful for the love I've found here."
 
Having thought this with his last conscious thought, Odie yawned and drifted
into a peaceful and dream-filled sleep.  The dream was more real than it had
ever been.  It was much more than a dream this time.  It was a memory.
 
"Chop, chop, chop," he heard as Joseph worked the timber with a vision of
the table that it would become.
 
"Joseph," he heard Mary say, "The soldiers are in the square.  It's
something about a census.  Put down your adze and let's go see what it's all
about."
 
"Soldiers?" Joseph replied.  "Are you sure that it's a census that they're
about?  Or have they found out about Josh, our ferret?"
 
To be continued...
 
Joy to the World!
[Posted in FML issue 1770]