Jeez, you weasels, we had a *great* time. Readers who recall every single thing they ever read on the FML may remember that I was hired by my mom last fall to mastermind the completion of her MS thesis. Well, it was hard work climbing up on the desk many, many times a day to push papers around, and I did have to take floppy disks to bed on occasion for safe-keeping (true story), but it's all over now. The worst was the night before the thesis defense when I had to listen to her practice the same talk THREE TIMES IN A ROW, and it didn't even have one word in it about ferrets (I got star billing in the acknowledgements section, though). Anyway, when it was all over, Mom loaded the whole pile of dogs and ferrets into the camper and we went on a celebratory road trip to Seattle. And here's what we have to say about the show: The show part was booooooring. Ever been to a cat show? Uh huh. All these gussied-up perty ferts with rhinestone collars being...held by judges. That's it. Seen one, seen 'em all, I say. Like someone else already mentioned, there were about a million signs warning you to not even think about touching a fert. The end. Now for the good part. To tell you the truth, we weasels were more interested in the shopping aspect. On the way to the show, one of use grabbed the steering wheel and another stomped on the brakes right in front of an ATM. Pretty well cleaned out Mom's life savings. Then we gave her a shopping list and sent her into the show. Like a personal shopper, y'know? Here's what we got: 1) Fert sleeping bag. Toasty warm, and absolutely crucial for crossing the Cascade Mountains on the trip home. 2) New hammock. We went for this because it was actually being demonstrated by a live ferret you could even touch! Oooh, scary. 3) Teeny, weeny, portable ferretone dispenser bottle. We make Mom carry it everywhere we go now, just in case. 4) Some more harnesses. We now have six different harness designs in our collection and consider ourselves to have quite sophisticated opinions on this subject. 5) Fert calendar. We just love looking at such beautiful specimens of the animal kingdom, don't you? The cool thing about the show was you could compare all these products for yourself, instead of squinting at some fuzzy JPEG image or reading someone's idea of marketing promo ("Ferrets love these!"). Believe it or not, people who couldn't possibly clear more than a few hundred dollars a year on their ferret merchandise flew all the way from the other coast just to set up tables at this event. More evidence that ferret people are truly crazy, huh? Well, enough of the show. We headed out of the parking lot, hung a rosco, and drove due west til we hit the ocean at a place called Dash Point State Park. Now we settled down for some serious ferrret ambassadorin'. Seattle was pretending it was spring last weekend, and the place was packed. Here's something about Seattle: everyone we met knew we was ferrets, and they all said nice things about us. Our favorite was a girl who told us her parents had recently separated and the non-custody parent (so to speak) took the ferret component of their family with him. Meany! She was so sad about it that we threw caution to the winds and covered her face with ferret kisses, eyelids and all. For awhile there, Mom was afraid *she* was about to become the custody parent. Eventually, we was pretty wore out by all the excitement. Good thing we got that sleeping bag. We let the dog ride shotgun for the trip home, and the next thing we know Mom was waking us up back in Montana. Oh my gosh! Someone might have moved something while we were gone! It took hours, but we examined the entire house at warp speed (some duplication of effort was involved). So exciting! Look, Dori, this carpet fiber is still in the right place! How about that one? Uh huh, and so's this leaf I left under the sofa last week! Hey, our food bowls are still here! Same cat! Bed looks okay! At about this point, we predict BIG will jump in to cut us off, before we detail every speck of dust in the house for you. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by all, and we hope a ferret show comes to your town soon too (or "nearby", in the Western definition of the word). -- Khaz "Where shall we go on our next road trip?" Dori "How about the moon?" Kobe "Don't you guys ever slow down?" Kim "I'm just the chaffeur" [Posted in FML issue 1856]