Dear Ferret Folks-
 
Ping is He was so ridiculous the other night that I just had to share.
 
He is a bone collector.  Chicken bones, to be specific.  He goes
spelunking in the trash to find them and retrieve them.  Now, I don't
really have a problem with this, depending upon what type of bone it
is.  I trust Bob Church when he says the occasional bone gnaw is good for
his teeth.  (Ping's, not Bob's, although I don't know the man personally
and cannot speak to his dietary habits.) Anyway, as long as Ping is
interested in drumstick bones, I let him have them.  Soft, hollow,
probably lots of good marrow inside.  I'm more worried about something
like a rib bone that seems to me to have really sharp ends when broken.
 
So, lucky Ping, he can actually *have* the drumstick bone he steals from
the trash.  Where we have a conflict is on the number of bones he may
steal at once.  I think one is quite sufficient.  Ping has another
vision.  He wants ALL of them.  He wants to take them and stash them
beneath my deep green velvety sofa in the living room, for consumption
at his liesure.  This is at odds with my one meal, one bone idea, but I
am bigger than Ping, and equally as stubborn.
 
The other night drumsticks were on sale for .99 cents a pound, and I
baked up a whole mess of them.  Like a dozen.  I caught Ping with a bone
in his mouth, headed for the sofa.  I took it and put it in the ferret
room.  Then, I caught Ping with a bone in his mouth, headed for the sofa.
I took it away.Then, I caught Ping with a bone in his mouth, headed for
the sofa.  I took it away.  Then, I caught Ping with a bone in his mouth,
headed for the sofa.  I took it away.  You get the idea.  I got tired of
that game.  The way my kitchen is set up, I can't really keep him out of
the trash.  So I had to go bone fishing myself to stop the cycle, placing
them out of his reach.
 
Ah, but he had one left that I hadn't found.  I found him with it in his
mouth, headed for the sofa.  I decided to demonstrate to him in a fashion
that he could understand that he could not *have* the bone.  I took one
end of the bone in my hand, so that he had the other in his teeth, and
was standing on his tippy toes trying to hold onto it.  I shook my end.
He would not let go.  I started to walk out of the living room.  Ping
followed like a dog on a leash, his teeth firmly embedded in his end of
the bone.  I made a sharp right turn, and off we went, the length of the
house...
 
Have you ever seen footage of that bizarre lizard that 'walks' on water,
little bitty back legs flailing and splashing while it skims along open
mouthed, trying to look like a fierce nature-photographer eating dragon?
Ping's little back legs looked like that, as he quick-stepped off of the
living room carpet and onto the kitchen linoleum.  He glared at me with
one eye, and panted a breathy little hiss the whole time.  His pink toe
pads gripped the linoleum firmly, and he toddled along without missing
a beat.  We walked right past the Ferret Room, and kept on going.  We
entered the back hall by the bathroom and the computer room, and finally,
a full sixty feet after we began our little contest of the wills, he lost
his grip on his end of the bone, and collapsed onto the floor like an
overboiled piece of macaroni.
 
He just lay there, and huffed once in a meaningful way.  Oh, I may have
won the battle, but he made it clear that I *really* sucked.  Then he
walked; not scampered, not bounded, not hopped, not any of those normal
ferret gaits....he just walked away, slowly, his tail hanging, head low.
 
And there I was, LUCKY ME! WITH MY OWN CHICKEN BONE!  I hardly knew what
to do with myself.
 
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 4900]