Clearly, Alexandra's ferrets have been chatting with my ferrets. Just as clearly, my fuzzies are corrupting the dogs as now they (the dogs) refuse to respond to my commands in a proper doggy fashion. They seem to now be speaking ferretese. An example, you ask? Very well. Many of you very helpfully responded to my last OT email about the dastardly mole invasion we are suffering through. The ferret and kitty litter solution seems to be a winner, by the way. The neighbors think I'm strange, but at least the moles are vacating MY yard. More deadly than the kitty litter though would be the dogs. We have gone from being Mighty Hunters in our own minds, to actually bearing some semblance to real Mighty Hunters. Lucy the Puppy has actually now caught two of the little suckers and done them in. I'm pretty sure the first time was an accident. We had merely been annoying the moles up until this point. I think she was able to get her mouth around one and ran it around the yard. It was scared to death. Or perhaps concussed, as Lucy likes to throw her toys up in the air and catch them. The second mole death though is where our Ferret Language Skills come into play. I saw the pupster pick up the mole. I saw her running gleefully towards me with said dead mole in her mouth. Knowing that the previous moles had mostly been alive and cranky, I really, really didn't want the pissed off mole anywhere near me. (They might be harmless mole pacifists, but they are still ugly and icky little things. You never know when the calm facade might crumble and the moles would turn into vicious man-eating he-devils.) I immediately started yelling, "No, no, no, stop! Drop it! Drop it, drop it, dropitdropitdropitdropit!!!!!!!" Lucy clearly interpreted this as "What do you have in your mouth, sweet dog? Please come share it with me. What a fine dog you are!" She launched herself at me about the same time as I slammed the door in an effort to stop her. There is no stopping Lucy the Mighty Hunter. She sailed gleefully through the doggy door, spat out the slimy icky mole at my feet and sat smiling, swishing her tail in big joyful arcs. I blame the ferrets completely. We used to be well behaved, innocent little dogs until we started spending copious amounts of time at the baby gate to the weasel room. There is no telling what we will do next. The only thing that gives me any hope at all is that I am the only one in the house with opposable thumbs. Sigh. [Posted in FML 5566]