There is an old saying that suggests you should never complain of one
thing happening after another.  It could be worse: they could happen all
at once.
 
Shortly after returning home from visiting my mother, 2 or 3 days I
think, I got a call that my brother had a chain-saw accident that cut his
leg pretty bad (take one chain-saw, one oak tree with a hidden chunk of
nail deep in the hard wood, and one idiotic brother playing lumberjack:
straddling the log he was cutting--the fool nearly took off his leg when
the saw bounced out).  Could I take charge of my nieces while his problem
was being ministered to?  I agreed as long as my ferrets could visit as
well.  Off I go for a week-long trip of "Uncle Bob playing the role of
mom and dad to three pubescent girls."
 
The girls loved everything about my ferrets except their smell, their
potty habits, and their deep, deep desire to sniff them.  Not a lot of
young girls at my house anymore and I forgot about all the smelly stuff
girls use that are natural attractants to ferrets.  Oh, well, you can't
have everything.  I did manage to convince the youngest of the three
that ferrets were the "Luck Dragon" in the book "The Neverending Story,"
although the other two remained skeptical.  By the end of the week, my
brother was home from the hospital with some cool scars, and the girls
managed to survive my "heart-healthy" cooking.
 
The trip was marred by the loss of two of my beloved ferrets.  Mickey
Moose had been suffering from bone cancer in his 3rd and 4th lumbar
vertebrae since last summer.  He died in my arms a few days ago, very
peacefully.  He just slowly slipped away.  His constant companion, Minnie
Moose, didn't seem too distressed, but the next morning, I found she had
died in her sleep.  I expected Mickey to die at any time, but Minnie took
me by surprise.  I spent the morning dragging three young girls around
town trying to find a vet that would do a necropsy.  When she was opened,
it was a shock to discover she had a ruptured vena cava; she died from a
ruptured aneurysm.  I have never seen that in a ferret before.  From the
reactive tissue, it must have been a problem for some time, but I never
saw anything that would give me cause to worry.  It was almost like she
knew Mickey didn't need her any more, so she didn't have to hang around
any longer.  My youngest niece said she must have died from a broken
heart.  I know the feeling.
 
The girls and I had a peaceful "service" in their backyard, and Mickey
and Minnie Moose now sleep together at the foot of a huge flame grape
vine, transplanted several years ago from my dad's vines.  I still have
an anxiety attack when my count is two-less than it should be.
 
I've noticed my e-mail box is bulging at the seams.  I'll be getting to
it in the next couple of days, and post the end of the domestication
series.
 
Bob C  [log in to unmask]
 
"The schooner Ferret appears to have had an affair with some pirates, and
succeed in capturing two launches--but it is not said how many, if any,
of their crew were taken."  Niles Weekly Register (July 19, 1823).
[Posted in FML issue 4764]