Dear Ferret Folks- This does not concern ferrets, but it does concern my dog, the noble Allis Chompers whom some of you know. She has borne nine years of ferretude in her home with fairly little complaint given the extent to which her patience has been tested by weasels over the years. Ferrets in her dog bed. Ferrets who crapped in *her* personal velvety green armchair, causing her to abandon it for weeks.. Ferrets in her food, hanging over the rim of her bowl and grazing on her chow. Attacks upon her tail from behind, from beneath furniture. Ping even used her nose for a chew toy, on one memorable occasion. She very carefully did not eat him, for which I am grateful to her. She was certainly provoked. Yes, she's been through it. She is an old dog now, at least ten, and she's seen a lot of things. We like to say that our new house is her retirement home. It is much more deeply snuggled into the woods than our apartment was. (We just moved in the last few weeks.) She has a sunny yard to lie in, and delights in rolling on her back ecstatically in fresh-cut grass. On hot days, she looks for the fringe of shade given by the swamp maples and white birches. Her eyes...slowly....shut, and she is back in her youth, chasing rabbits in her dreams, paws twitching in the grass. Yes, she probably thought she'd seen it all, all the mad things that hoomins do. Well, the old dog learned something new yesterday, and it was a scream! There were two hemlocks growing in our new front yard. I have nothing against hemlocks, but these two should never have been allowed to grow as close to the house as these. One good New England ice storm, and boughs would have rained down on the roof. Hemlocks have a bad habit of tipping over in a high wind, too, and both of these could have come down on the rafters if that had happened. Unfortunately, they had to go. My husband fired up the 1969 John Deere model 1020 tractor and wrapped chains around the first tree. A good pull, and the first one fell over with a thump and a flurry of bark chips. Allis watched all of this from a distance, and clearly wanted to be included in the fun. There were neighbours standing around watching, There was diesel smoke, shouting, high excitement all around. A chain saw fired up, and the first tree was sliced into manageable lengths, the boughs stripped off. I don't like to kill a healthy tree, but roofs are *expensive.* The second tree was prepared. Again, a stout chain was wrapped around the trunk, and the tractor started revving up. Allis was standing a bit closer to the second tree than she had to the first, maybe fifteen feet away, but on the safe side of the tree. (She's not stoopid, she saw the first one come down, after all, and I wouldn't let her stand on the bad side of the tree that was about to be lying on the ground.). A belch of smoke from the tractor, and the second tree began to tip. Well, this tree had one very long, very strong root running horizontally just a few inches below ground level. As the tree tipped more and more, the carpet of grass and weeds and moss at the base of the tree lifted up above the root. The ground actually swelled like a liquid wave above this long root, and Allis started rising *with* the wave. She was probably two or three feet up and rising rapidly as the ground beneath her lifted. Her ears stood up and away from her head like exclamation points, and her eyes popped wide open. She stood frozen in shock for an instant, then *leapt* for the safety and the sanity of the house, which had certainly never moved in her experience, and offered, she hoped, some protection from this doggie bad acid trip of an event. She didn't make a peep, she just flew with the vigor of her former youthful athleticism. She landed on ground that wasn't moving at about the same time as the second tree lay down, and was still. She stood there, looking at it, her tail hanging limply. Then she turned her head and gave me a long, soulful and searching look, her eyebrows raised as if to say "What the HELL was that all about? The ground has never moved *before.* Never. I would remember." Then she did what she does in moments of extreme dismay. She padded over, all forty five pounds of her, (she is a cross between a lab and a border collie, which either makes her a Blab or A Borderline Collie) and sat down on one of my feet. She rested her gaze on the raised mound of earth that she had been standing on, and just stared at it. Then she huffed a few times, and lay down, still staring, waiting to see if the grassy carpet would move anymore. It didn't. But we are horrible people, horrible. We laughed and laughed and laughed at her. I think perhaps her entire understanding of the universe has changed. Next time we see her lying as flat as a pancake on her side in a sunbeam with eyes closed and paws twitching, will she be chasing that rabbit through the thick stands of mountain laurel and high bush blueberry, or will she perhaps be...leaping to sanity in a world gone suddenly mad? Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML issue 5335]