Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Blissed
This is Charlotte, our ferret. We used to have two, but her sister Emily escaped one day and never showed her twitchy nose again. My fault, unfortunately. I’ve never been good at multiprocessing, and one day, I tried simultaneously to give the ferrets some exercise and clean house. Emily slipped out, but the smarter and nicer Bronte remained.
I would love to think that Emily is sipping mojitos with other expatriate ferrets, chatting about the irresistible cache of stray socks and the unbearable yumminess of human toes, but alas, ferrets can’t exist without humans. Ours would only eat one brand of kitten chow and never, ever showed interest in other offerings. If Emily were dying of thirst and found a puddle of water, I doubt she would know what to do with it.
Not to mention the sad fact that something — a dog, perhaps — picked off the cats in that neighborhood. A ferret would be no match.
Charlotte doesn’t miss her sister. Emily was nasty to everyone, her sister included, and Charlotte’s personality improved greatly following Emily’s disappearance. We keep Charlotte up in our master bedroom so that she’ll feel part of the family. Kind of a bitch when she musks, but it’s worth it to keep her happy.
Short blog tonight — I want to start working on my Thirteen. Happy Hump Day!
D.
Adorable!
As you know, Doug, we at chez Microsoar (well, my daughter, really, but it seems to fall to me to do most of the work and pay the bills) also have a couple of ferrets (see Here. Half the fun of Snuffles and Cambridge is their interaction, dodging a ball of scuffling and romping ferrets as they writhe across the living room floor dooking*. We used to have one only (who died), but two are exponential fun. Mind you, we’ve been lucky; they’re both pretty socialised.
The ferret cage is outside on the porch though. I have no idea how you manage to keep Charlotte in the bedroom. The musk gets pretty intense sometimes just after a good 2 hr romp in the living room….
(*dooking, for those not in the know, is the sort of clucking noise a ferret makes when excited – often accompanied by a series of sideways jumps – which in turn is referred to as a “weasel war dance”.)
Thanks, CD.
Yup, I remember that post, microsaur. I don’t think we’ll introduce another jill while Charlotte’s alive, but maybe we’ll buy two when she dies of old age. Charlotte and Emily together were never much fun, surprisingly enough.
HOW SWEET!!!! *squeal* That expression and body langauge sez it all, huh? Wish I could relax like that.
Lyn, if humans had that kind of flexibility, we wouldn’t need to find mates 🙂
I miss having ferrets. Unfortunately, we now own a rat terrier – I don’t think we could ever socialize him to them…
Sooooo cute. Wish I could have one…
[…] Charlotte Brontë died sometime last night. She was getting up there for a ferret, maybe six years old, and had begun losing hair from her back. Last time we let her out of her cage to jump around, she didn’t jump around much, just raced off to her favorite spot in the bathroom to have another nap. No dancing, no chook-chooking. […]