Mommy's Treats

When my ferrets hear a bag crinkle, they think it's their treat bag. It's the one sound that can bring all of them running. The problem is, many human snacks also come in bags that make nice crinkling sounds.

Louis and Bella are particularly devoted to people food. Bella will relentlessly attack the futon if she finds out there's food on it and Louis just likes to steal anything that might be edible. Louis has these two cute little fangs that hang way down out of his mouth. Because one is slightly longer than the other, he looks like a snaggletoothed little vampire. As I've mentioned before, he's my favorite ferret. He's also a little bit special.

All of these things came together tonight as I found myself scruffing him and trying to remove his teeth from the corner of my bag of cheese puffs. Once he locks onto something, you usually have to pry his jaws open to get it back. There is now a half inch tear in the bottom of my bag.

Those are mommy's treats, Louis. Mommy's treats.

Like a Twisted Version of Charlotte's Web...

Click on the chick for my favorite fact of the day:

The Red Ferret

I am a multi-tasker. I take great pride in this. Apparently, it's very common for women to not only indulge in multi-tasking, but thrive upon it. I often monitor my ferrets' out of cage time while watching a video online, playing a game on Pogo.com and taking an online survey. I get bored doing just one thing at the time.

My ferrets have trained me well for future motherhood. Multi-tasking is a must with ferrets and kids since you have to watch everything going on around you while heading off potential disasters. I probably won't be able to let my kids just run around while I indulge in internet time, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Another good mothering skill I've picked up is calm in the face of crisis.

This weekend we had a couple of college friends staying with us. I'd promised to apply eye makeup to one of them before she went out for the evening and so I left my boyfriend, Will*, with the ferrets while I played makeup artist. I was sitting in my roommate's room swiping eye shadow onto my friend Susan when I heard Will call me.
"Honey?" he said.
"Yes, sweety?" I replied, finishing up the eye shadow.
"Fox turned over the punch." Fox is our number one son. I mean ferret. He has a tendency to climb onto the furniture and, in this case, turned over a glass of red kool-aid. "Can you come get him?" Will continued.
"In a minute." I moved on to lining Susan's widening eyes as we listened to the details of the incident.
"There's punch all over the futon and he's red. Can you come here?"
"Scruff him with one hand and clean up with the other." This is what I would have done if I had been in there. 'Scruffing' ferrets, or holding them by the loose skin on the back of their neck, is a safe way to calm them down and immobilize them temporarily.
"I can't, he's going crazy and the rest of them are trying to drink punch off the futon cushion," Will's voice informed me from across the hallway.
I sighed. "He's obviously not a mother," I told the three girls sitting with me.

They laughed and I realized that what I had said was very true. I realized that even though none of us are mothers yet, or plan to be any time soon, we all pride ourselves on our womanly common sense and ability to take control of a situation. The two friends we had visiting are both teachers and one of them said, "Yeah, a mother or a teacher would have that cleaned up in no time." We laughed again, sure in our capability and proud of the natural wiring that makes us tough in messy situations and calm in the face of crisis.

I finished Susan's makeup and went across the hall to mop up the punch and give Fox a bath in the kitchen sink.


*All human names have been changed.

Camel Crickets and Ferret Sales Continued

Camel crickets are not the only danger I face (even though we have found 2 or 3 more since I last updated). There is another danger out there far more...dangerous.

The dreaded ferret sale.

I was buying ferret food the other day and, naturally, I stopped by the ferrets on my way to the food aisle. There was a pile of sleeping fur in there. Ferrets sleep in the most uncomfortable looking positions. They're long enough to lie with their stomach up, twisting around midway so that their head is chin down. If you have more than one they curl up together and make it difficult to figure out what tail belongs to what animal, not to mention all those legs.

In this cage, there were eight. That's a lot for such a small space and as I leaned back I saw the price tag. Ferrets in this area range from about $110-$130. The price tag on this cage said: Ferrets $59.99. My first thought was that I must not tell my boyfriend. He would immediately demand that we buy several at such a good price. Not that I wasn't tempted myself. In fact, I counted and did some quick math to see how much it would cost to buy them all. Even as I did it, I knew I was slipping into insanity.

I grabbed the industrial sized bag of food and headed for the counter. "So, I see your ferrets are on sale," I said casually to the guy at the counter. "Yeah, and they all have great personalities--" he began. I waved my hand and cut him off. "I have 6. Don't need more," here I patted the huge bag of ferret chow. "Why are they on sale?" Turns out they had received ferrets from two other stores that were closing or undergoing work and they were, very simply, overstocked on ferrets.

I have resisted admirably. Even though I know there are adorable ferrets just down the road to be had at half price; a white one with red eyes and a dark little female with an itchy chin and a chubby boy with brown and grey fur; even though I know all this, I haven't emptied my bank account to buy them and the required accessories.

Because not only do I not have any more space to add cages in the ferret room, I have several other pets. I have 3 fish tanks, a chinchilla and a hermit crab. Any time a free animal or a cheap ferret comes my way, I have a hard time resisting. But I have. And I continue to.

Does this mean I'm getting better?

Camel Crickets and Ferret Sales

Since before I moved into my house this spring, I've known it was popular with camel crickets. Unfortunately, despite their harmless ways, they are some of my least favorite bugs. I figured that once I moved in and cleaned up a little, they would go away. They like things to be damp and dark, two things my house is not. But even now, months later, I still find at least one cricket a month. Often they're lurking under the bottom edge of my kitchen cabinets or hopping around in my living room. On several distressing occasions I've found them in my bedroom.

Last night I trapped one under a plastic cup in my kitchen. I keep some cups under the sink for such times. If I find them at night, I usually let them sit under the cup overnight and think about what they've done since it's too cold and dark to go out on the patio and release them. So I left Mr. Leggy under his punishment dome and hopped on the exercise bike in my living room. After pedalling for ten minutes or so I saw a cricket come creeping out from behind the love seat. This is the scene that followed:

I jumped up, screaming, "Mama!" and then, "This is highly unacceptable!"

I ran to the kitchen and checked to make sure Mr. Leggy hadn't escaped. Sure enough, he was still in time-out.

I grabbed yet another bug cup from under the sink (Yes, I have several. Is that weird?) and proceeded to go after Mr. Bigger and Leggier.

Knowing that these monsters jump TOWARD you when startled, I snuck up behind him and started slamming the cup down. It took several tries and in the process I severed one of his large hind legs.

I made an executive decision and smashed him to death with the cup. If he had just been cooperative like so many others, I would have kept him in solitary overnight and then freed him the next day, but no.

Tracy Chevalier

I finished Tracy Chevalier's Falling Angels this week. I knew I would like the book since I loved her Burning Bright, which includes the bizarre poet William Blake among its characters. Falling Angels, like Burning Bright, centers around real places and events while following the lives of its fictional main characters. The two girls at the heart of the story, Maude and Lavinia, meet for the first time in a cemetery while participating in public mourning for the death of Queen Victoria.

During the course of the story, Maude and Lavinia find themselves living in a rapidly changing world. Lavinia clings to the traditions that flourished under Victoria while Maude must reconcile her ideas of family and her place in the world with the increasingly outrageous behavior of her suffragette mother. All of the important people in the girls' lives have a chance to speak for themselves and add their own information to the appearance and truth of the other characters. Lavinia's melodramatic views remind me of myself when I was younger, but her sister Ivy May, a silent figure in the background of the story, may stick with me longer.

I tend to finish books in clusters and I also finished reading Blood and Gold by Anne Rice this week. Longitude will probably be polished off along with some leftover birthday cake tonight.

All Bow to Hulu

I don't watch TV. I don't have cable and my TV doesn't pick up local stations, so the giant screen in the living room is only for watching DVDs and occasionally playing video games. There are a few shows I'd like to keep up with but I can't make them appear on the magic screen.

Enter Hulu.com. It started out as a casual thing. I somehow got sucked into Grey's Anatomy last year and I'd go to Hulu to watch the new episode each week. But on those lonely nights in the ferret room or sitting on my bed with nothing else to do, I found I wanted to watch more than just the latest episode of GA.

I moved on to Glee, Flash Forward, and Modern Family. Before I knew it I was devouring all available episodes of Cougar Town, Saturday Night Live and Community. Conversations with my boyfriend began to center around shows he'd never watched and had no desire to, but which I gleefully quoted and described to him as his eyes glazed over.

I seem to have run out of shows for the time being and will probably soon find myself drifting back to Pogo.com (which is another story entirely) to fill my internet hours. Hulu only has the 5 or so most recent episodes at the time for most shows and now that I've watched all of them I find myself having to wait patiently for the next installment. One episode per week. It's just like I'm watching TV again. But I can't play Battle Phlinx on my TV...

The Only One Laughing

I saw a musical at my Alma Mater today. It was a show with a lot of references to movies and other shows. There were also several theatre jokes during which I found myself to be the only person in my entire section laughing. And I laughed loud.

As a graduate of the Theatre Department, I seemed far more amused than most of the audience during lines like, "You're INDICATING!" I was sitting next to my mother and started jabbing her arm and shrieking at that point. During intermission I found myself compelled to bring it up again and explain to her what that meant. I impressed upon her the idea that an accusation of indication is one of the biggest insults in theatre.

My favorite thing about the play was the similarity to The Bad Seed. The Bad Seed is a movie from 1956 about a murderous young girl. It was originally a play and was made into a movie again in the 80s, but the 1956 production is the best. It's so satisfyingly dark and compelling.