It was a soft, August summer night in New England. The crickets chirped
their simple love songs in tandem, and the moon shone fuzzily through
the light cloud cover. From time to time a cat's paw of breeze would
stir the long grasses, and set the hemlocks and white birches to
nodding. It was a beautiful night. The two owls in the forest behind
the house hooted to one another, and somewhere far off in the distance
a dog barked to be let into his house with his people, who were
apparently asleep, and oblivious to his wishes.

Ping and Puma, of course, chose not to spend the night in their cage.
The night was too sweet, too full of interesting smells and sounds to
spend it indoors. They had long since slipped out of the cage and out
through the cat door, and into the moonlight.

The two ferrets had built a soft nest in the long grass growing under
the 1949 John Deere tractor, the one with the two tiny wheels in front,
and the two giant wheels behind. What with the price of Diesel up over
four dollars a gallon, they had done precious little flying in quite
some time. But they still enjoyed the smell of the tractor, of the
crank-case oil and the grease fittings, the smell of Diesel and engine
coolant. They liked to sit and reminisce about the journeys they had
taken, the adventures that they had had. Oh, they laughed and chatted
happily as the moon swung further and further along in its course
across the night sky.

Finally, they were silent, just sitting together companionably,
listening to the crickets. Ping was leaning back against the inside of
one of the enormous rear wheels chewing a sliver of grass when he took
it out of his mouth and asked "Puma, what does appropriate mean?"

"Hmm..." Puma sat and thought and considered that one for a while. In
the nature of the best friendships it wasn't necessary to fill up every
moment with talking. Puma ran her front paws through the grass like a
comb and thought.

Finally she said "Appropriate is the word that hoomins use when they
are having a fight and they are trying to pretend that they aren't
actually having one."

Ping asked simply "Why? Why not just have a fight and bite and scratch
if that's what they really want."

"Well," said Puma "hoomins think that it's not civilized to fight. But
they are animals, too, so they do fight. They just pretend that they
aren't. They start by saying that what the other hoomin is saying is
inappropropriate. Then they bite and scratch with words."

Ping asked again, "Why?"

Puma adjusted herself more comfortably in the long grass nest and
thought. She thought for a long time, and Ping waited, very patiently.
He knew that Puma was wise in the ways of the hoomins, and he wasn't.

Finally, Puma looked up at the moon, her brow rumpled in deep thought.
And she said "Have you ever really *looked* at a hoomin? Their teeth
are short and dull. No good for biting. And their paws? Not like ours
at all. No claws for scratching and slashing. I think that they know
they're helpless, and it makes them insecure. So they fight a lot to
deal with the insecurity."

"Ah...," sighed Ping. Then he continued "But...why do they get insecure
about what we eat?"

Puma fixed Ping with fierce stare. She said sternly "Ping is He, your
question is inappropriate." Then she lunged across the space between
them and sank her fangs into the soft meat of his thigh. Ping yelled
something wholly unprintable and punched her in the head with one
softly furred paw. In seconds, they were both rolling, snarling and
scratching. Ping grunted, with some effort, "This....(oof!)..is not
appropriate, woman!" And Puma giggled "Your inappropriateness is
inappropriate!" And then the two of them were laughing so hard that
they could only lie there in the grass, weakly kicking out and throwing
wide of the mark punches that didn't land.

"Hoomins," said Puma, lying on her back, breathing hard from the
tussle. "who can understand them."

"Yeah," said Ping, lying at her side, also trying to get his breathing
under control. "They mate when they are not in heat." At this both
started laughing so hard that they could only lie there. They rolled
into one another's arms and laughed until the tears ran down the fur
of their faces. "Oh!" said Puma. "No more, no more!"

"Now THAT'S inappropriate!"panted Ping.

"But...but..." laughed Puma, "do they eat raw chicken wings, after?"

And then the two ferrets dissolved into helpless snarfing laughter on
the grass. They held their bellies, and their back legs pinwheeled as
if they were riding imaginary bicycles.

"That...that" wheezed Ping, weakly "would be...inappropriate!"

And they howled, positively howled with laughter out into the night,
beneath the light of the moon.

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 6063]