the Story of the Dead Ferrets
Stumbling home bone-tired after work one Sunday morning, my neighbour Margaret hailed me from her front lawn with a cry of, "Hey! Have you seen our ferrets?"
Margaret and her partner keep something of a menagerie in their backyard: dogs that bark at our dogs, parrots that tell our dogs (and all and sundry) to "Shut up!", and no doubt at least two of every other species as well. And a family of four ferrets as well, which had gone missing some time during the previous night.
She seemed quite upset, and I attempted to calm her down a bit. "Hey, they're probably just holed up somewhere getting some sleep, now. Aren't ferrets nocturnal?" She said that they were, but that they could have gone missing any time between dinnertime the previous evening and breakfast. I think what she was really saying, though she was still upset enough not to just say it plainly, is that they'd had plenty of night-time to be killed by something, alright.
And all this talk of meals sparked a very unpleasant thought in my head, then. "Oh shit!", I thought, "what if they got into our backyard?"
Both of our dogs, you see, still seem to have very acute hunting instincts in spite of our best efforts to civilise them, and they'll kill anything that's alive and small enough to fit into their mouths. Pigeons and doves mostly, but they're not species-ist, and they're not ones to turn up their muzzles at a free meal when a free meal presents itself. And if the ferrets did go into our backyard, I did not want to be the one to deliver up their remnants to Margaret, that was for sure.
Pleading exhaustion, I excused myself and told Margaret that I hoped I could find the ferrets soon, all the while hoping quite the opposite. If I did manage to find them, ferrets being ferrets, they were sure to be in less than a salubrious condition...
When I got inside, my mother seemed to be... well, a bit agitated. And the first thing she said to me was, "Have you seen Margaret this morning? What did she say?"
You don't have to be a prophet to see what was going on: she'd gone into the backyard early this morning, to find the dogs proudly standing over the remains of three mutilated and very dead ferrets, which they had conveniently deposited upon their bed for the first human out's approbation.
The three dead ferrets lying there, side by side, and the dogs standing there looking up beseechingly with their cute, light-brown puppy-dog eyes... a very Hallmark moment.
That first person out was my mum, who didn't react with approval and admiration for the dogs and their hunting skills, as they had obviously hoped. Instead, she freaked out, screamed, and smacked both of the dogs on the bottom, sending them scurrying to the side of the house and wondering just what the hell was wrong with these crazy people, you go to all this trouble to find and give them wonderful gifts like that and they don't appreciate it one little bit...
All of which left Mum with three shredded ferrets and two very upset neighbours. Mum had spoken to them both before I did, and they were both tearful and upset. And when Mum found the ferrets in our backyard, she... well, didn't really want to explain to Margaret that our dogs had mangled her ferrets, even if it was technically the ferret's fault for coming into our backyard. She immediately went into cover-up mode, which Mum is extremely proficient at given how many times she had to cover up for us to Dad when we'd perpetrated some outrage as kids, popped the ferrets into a plastic Myer's bag, tied the top, and carefully buried the bag in our trash.
And not long after that, Margaret's partner moved out. Coincidence? I hope so.
Margaret and her partner keep something of a menagerie in their backyard: dogs that bark at our dogs, parrots that tell our dogs (and all and sundry) to "Shut up!", and no doubt at least two of every other species as well. And a family of four ferrets as well, which had gone missing some time during the previous night.
She seemed quite upset, and I attempted to calm her down a bit. "Hey, they're probably just holed up somewhere getting some sleep, now. Aren't ferrets nocturnal?" She said that they were, but that they could have gone missing any time between dinnertime the previous evening and breakfast. I think what she was really saying, though she was still upset enough not to just say it plainly, is that they'd had plenty of night-time to be killed by something, alright.
And all this talk of meals sparked a very unpleasant thought in my head, then. "Oh shit!", I thought, "what if they got into our backyard?"
Both of our dogs, you see, still seem to have very acute hunting instincts in spite of our best efforts to civilise them, and they'll kill anything that's alive and small enough to fit into their mouths. Pigeons and doves mostly, but they're not species-ist, and they're not ones to turn up their muzzles at a free meal when a free meal presents itself. And if the ferrets did go into our backyard, I did not want to be the one to deliver up their remnants to Margaret, that was for sure.
Pleading exhaustion, I excused myself and told Margaret that I hoped I could find the ferrets soon, all the while hoping quite the opposite. If I did manage to find them, ferrets being ferrets, they were sure to be in less than a salubrious condition...
When I got inside, my mother seemed to be... well, a bit agitated. And the first thing she said to me was, "Have you seen Margaret this morning? What did she say?"
You don't have to be a prophet to see what was going on: she'd gone into the backyard early this morning, to find the dogs proudly standing over the remains of three mutilated and very dead ferrets, which they had conveniently deposited upon their bed for the first human out's approbation.
The three dead ferrets lying there, side by side, and the dogs standing there looking up beseechingly with their cute, light-brown puppy-dog eyes... a very Hallmark moment.
That first person out was my mum, who didn't react with approval and admiration for the dogs and their hunting skills, as they had obviously hoped. Instead, she freaked out, screamed, and smacked both of the dogs on the bottom, sending them scurrying to the side of the house and wondering just what the hell was wrong with these crazy people, you go to all this trouble to find and give them wonderful gifts like that and they don't appreciate it one little bit...
All of which left Mum with three shredded ferrets and two very upset neighbours. Mum had spoken to them both before I did, and they were both tearful and upset. And when Mum found the ferrets in our backyard, she... well, didn't really want to explain to Margaret that our dogs had mangled her ferrets, even if it was technically the ferret's fault for coming into our backyard. She immediately went into cover-up mode, which Mum is extremely proficient at given how many times she had to cover up for us to Dad when we'd perpetrated some outrage as kids, popped the ferrets into a plastic Myer's bag, tied the top, and carefully buried the bag in our trash.
And not long after that, Margaret's partner moved out. Coincidence? I hope so.