Allah be praised, Christ be honored, Confucius be thanked, and Buddha - hey guy you done good. Yeah Yehova too: right on friends! You did me right last night and at dawn too. The good news: my little ermine girl by name of CAHIL-ni came back home sometime during this morning's early hours and came right in through the "left-opened" Ferretarium door. Soooo happy, especially on Father's Day. What a nice present of joy and happiness when I discovered her asleep in an extra nest box, all curled up and just as warm as up-popped toast. under several layers of old towels and such. CAHIL-ni is a rescued little ermine lady, pure white except for a dusky tail and those two bright twinkling negro eyes. Boy, is she beautiful or what. Ummmm. Gorgeous. She is named after her source. That being the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, an area that is populated mostly by the homosexual crowd. She was never claimed by her legal owner and like an earlier pick-up from the same neighborhood by name of CAHIL-ichi, her name, since she's the second one recovered is CAHIL-ni. As you know perhaps that "ichi" and "ni" are the Japanese words for "one" and "two." Last night about 12:30 or so I went out to the ferret digging grounds with my flashlight to bring back into the ferretarium the several ferrets that had been staked out there throughout the day. Nothing was to be seen, since all the ferrets were snuggled up asleep inside the tunnels they had dug or enlarged during the day. But I was shocked when I went to CAHIL-ni's tunnel and saw the opened figure-8 Englander Geschirr [G.] english harness lying limp and empty on the ground still attached by its line to the hitching post. Nope. She wasn't in the tunnel either. Hooo Boy!!! & S!P!F!!!* Oh, my heart sunk like a rock. Spent the next hour with a powerful boater's flashlight going very slowly all around the neighborhood hoping to spot her or the refection from her eyes that glow back at you like two tiny, twinkling blue/green Christmas /Hanukkah lights. I was nervously aware that any moment a Mercer Island Police car would come and spotlight me as a consequence of a nervous neighbor worried about some lunatic out there after midnight shining a flashlight all around his house. Yes, it's happened before. Didn't find her and crawed into bed feeling pretty damn disgusted with myself for trusting my 10-year old Englander Geschirr. I hate to admit it, but somehow in my mind I said a very sincere prayer that she'd come home. Now for an avowed agnostic, that's a guilt-laden admission. Yes it is. But she did come home safe and sound. Now since I'm kinda' walking around here in the religious spirit, I'd like to ask any biblical scholars out there if they can find in the earlier version of the King James version of the Bible, the chapter and verse, wherein it states in so many words, that God said he didn't much go for the idea that people should eat ferrets. Tis reported He said that's a big No-No. As the Bible was being translated into English for the good king James, there was the prohibition about eating the gekko lizard that was common in the Holy Land but not in the British Isles. So, as the story goes, so not to confuse King James, the translators substituted the word "ferret" for the word "gekko" since there were wild ferrets all over England at this time. To my understanding, that's how the ferret got into the Bible, but only in the very early editions. Some time later it was expunged. By whom and by what authority, is very, very interesting to comtemplate, nicht wahr? [G.] not so? Oh, and on another note of import to me, especially since I've had two ferrets from the homosexual community, and both gave copious kisses, is there even a remote possibility that HIV/AIDS could be transmitted via the ferret's saliva from the saliva of the ferret's previous owner, whose lover died of AIDS just prior to giving up this ferret? Seems a little scary to me. Wasn't HIV/AIDS transmitted from the monkey to man originally? I recall that it was. Could it also be transmitted from ferret to man? Hmmm. Do I have the responsibility to inform a would-be-adopter of such a ferret that it was originally owned by now deceased victims of AIDS? If so, would that ferret ever be adopted into the non-homosexual ("straight") community? Edward Lipinski . . . just thinking, thinking, and thinking. (Not the famous last words of a German submarine Kapitan with a slight lisp.) *S!P!F!!! This is a salty USNavy epithet of extreme disgust, anger and self deprecation to the max. It means S**t! P*ss! F**k!!! and is usually explosively uttered with spittle spewing, bullet-like dropplets of hot spit issuing forth between clenched teeth and pursed lips. 'Twas wise to stand aways well aft and clear of a boatswain's mate who uttered such an oath. [Posted in FML issue 2717]