Dear Ferret Folks-

I apologize if I am offending anyone of Mexican origin, but I have
decided that it is just too hot in Mexico. Not for Mexicans, but for
middle-aged Yankee housewives who like ferrets. At least it is too hot
in late May for middle-aged Yankee housewives who like ferrets. That is
why I did not want to *go* to the otherwise lovely city of Playa Del
Carmen, at twenty degrees north of the equator. But, well, it had to be
done. My Mom was going to go come hell or high water, only days after
her two surgeries for kidney stones. And dang it, I didn't want to
have to go down there on an emergency basis to rescue her if she had a
medical problem and needed to be retrieved. The correct daughter thing
to do was to go with her in case there was a problem. Even though I
knew FULL WELL that I was facing hundred-plus degree days.

I am a cold-blooded Yankee. My ancestors hunted Ice Age mammals. And
when they started going after cod instead in the cold, steel-gray
waters off of New England, my internal thermostat adjusted itself from
the Pleistocene to George's Bank. And stayed that way. Oh, it is not
that I don't enjoy the tropics, I just don't enjoy them this time of
year. I mean, I really, really don't enjoy hundred-plus degree days,
even if I am sitting on an ancient Mayan pyramid, watching the jungle
rain tiny orange butterflies by the millions into the blanket-wet air.
My Mother? I think she is some kind of genetic throw-back to the days
when her ancestors walked out of Africa with a hairly little baby on
every woman's hip. She is missing the Pleistocene chromosome
altogether. I bet she couldn't waste a mammoth or snare a cod to save
her life. (Insert disdainful sniff here.) I love her, anyway. So I
went.

And it was hot. Very hot. Very, very hot. The Inter-Tropic Front had
not yet made an appearance, and the land was a good three months away
from a cooling rain. Which all goes to make me very, very glad that I
have never seen a ferret in the Mexican Riviera. Even the banana trees
were limp. And so was I. My skin burned, right through the sun-block.
My hands and feet and ankles swelled, my blood vessels dilating to
try to shed the awful burden of heat in my blood. I did have one
consolation, though. I knew that husband at home in Massachusetts
missed me. Really, really, loved and missed me. Every day. I have been
unlucky on many fronts, but lucky in love. I told myself "there are
people whose spouse would be GLAD if they were gone for ten days."
Not mine. Not mine.

It is this love that leaves me essentially blind to the hellish mess
that always results when my husband is left alone for any length of
time. As I write this, there is a mound of laundry on the dining-room
table, several feet high. (It is clean, he really does love me!) There
are crushed potato chips on the floor. There are no clean forks or
spoons. There was dog-fur on the sheets on my side of the bed on the
night I got home. Paw sand, too. It will be days before I can find all
the mail. My beloved stashes it, like Puma stashes those brown plastic
medicine bottles. And while I am away, my husband always runs head-long
into some situation that is comical, and uniquely his. Something that
almost assuredly would not have happened if I had been on-site. Such
as this....

In my absence my husband decided to pull down our old and cracked
chimney. It needed to be done. The fireplace also needed to be blocked
up to ensure that ferrets running loose through the house didn't just
walk outside through the hole. But I wasn't home to point that out. So
my husband let the ferrets loose. And they squeezed past the fire place
screen, and out into the night.

Lucky, happy ferrets! Nosing through the fresh, new grass. Smelling
night smells. And, of course, immediately running for the green wooden
chicken coop with the rectangular opening in front. That would be the
coop full of chickens.

You have to imagine that coop as being full of light in the dark night,
bars of buttery yellow light shining through the spaces between the
boards. That light helped keep the chickens warm when they were just
peeps. They are teenagers now, and we have yet to turn the light on a
timer off. So the coop is still lit up all night long, as it was that
night. Imagine ferrets making a bee-line for the light.

Imagine my husband finally deciding that it was time to put the ferrets
away for the night. He squeaked a squeaky, and *no* ferrets came. Not
even Puma, who never sleeps through the squeaky toy, no matter how
deeply she has stashed herself for the night. Imagine my husband
looking up from the carpet in the living room, and seeing that big
black empty square behind the fireplace screen, the one leading
DIRECTLY OUTSIDE. To the chicken coop, the one full of chickens. The
kind of chickens that Ping likes to chase, and grab by the throat.
Those chickens.

Well, my hubby was out the back door in a flash, squeaky in hand. He
squoke a few times and to his shock, *chickens* came, chickens blasting
out of that coop, back-lit by the heat lamp and screaming their heads
off. And not too far behind them was Puma, who left the coop *dooking*
every foot of the way, dooking and dancing in the night grass. And
behind Puma came Ping, pouring himself into the grass from out of the
lit door of the coop. Was he coming for the squeaky? No. He was just
following the chickens. The tender, lovely chickens that he dreams
about every moment that he is caged in our home. And there was my
husband in the darkness of the back deck, surrounded by terrified ,
wing-flapping chickens and leaping weasels, with a blue sea-monster
dog's squeaky toy in one hand.

I so, so wish I had seen it.

There are now concrete blocks blocking the fireplace. Things would have
turned out differently, if I had been home. But no, I was in Mexico,
watching cars drive the wrong way down one way streets. Backwards,
sometimes...the driver's heads stuck out the window, like those of
faithful dogs who should not be allowed to drive. Ever. Like Gringo
men who do not realize that ferrets can and will exit a house through
a ten-foot square hole in the side of it. The square footage of the
rip in the side of the Titanic was only a little bigger, and look what
happened there. Imagine ferrets dancing on icebergs as the life boats
fill up...

But I digress. By all means, visit the lovely Mexican Riviera...but
perhaps not in May. And make sure you have a sitter for your husband
if you cannot bring him.

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 5990]