Post 542: What COULD have been an awesome post,

is simply going to be an average one. Why, you ask?













You see that picture up there? Yes, that one. It's a ferret, but more importantly, it's a STOCK photo of a ferret, not a photo of the one who pressed his little pink nose up against our patio doors the other cold, snowy night.

Yes, we had a little visitor.

Here's the story: After I got home from work, I was unwinding a bit playing with the Wii (no, not MY Wii, THE Wii), and I'm literally in mid-swing, and our Big Black Dog, Cinder, goes absolutely BONKERS in the kitchen. And by bonkers I mean totally bananas. Barking that guttural, "there's something going on here to which I most strenuously object" bark that demands that someone pay attention. So we check it out, and she's standing at the glass doors, looking outside at full pointed attention, hair standing on end. That posture is usually reserved for when she objects to the presence of a bird in the yard. So she's pressing her nose up against the glass, ready to bound through the doorway. We let her out, and took a quick look around, knowing that there had to be SOMETHING bothering her. Upon a cursory examination of the area we saw little footie-prints in the fresh snow. It looked like a cat had made the mistake of wandering through the yard.

So Cinder pads around for a few minutes without incident, and we let her back in - she doesn't stay outside much during the dinner hour, because there are little hands all over the place who don't mind dropping a crumb her way. Or broccoli.

So we're in the kitchen and we look up and there's a little pink nose pressed up against the window, and the little dog, Charlie, the more vicious of the two, is pressed right up there on the other side of the glass, thinking, "geez, if there wasn't glass here, I wouldn't have to beg for broccoli, I could have some of my very own fresh ferret meat."

After restraining the animals, the kids opened the door, picked the rodent up, and let the dogs do the introductory sniffing of the arse. Once everybody was acquainted it was time to find the ferret's home. There was no collar, or any other identifying tags or what have you.

So we loaded it up in the car and went driving around to the neighbors' houses. Is this your ferret? Nope. Next. We found the right home on the fifth try, and it turns out the critter belongs to the neighbors we affectionately call "the trailer trash people." At least that's what we call them when we're in a good mood, and they aren't yelling at their kids at the top of their lungs.

They really are pretty trashy though - they have 3 Boxers who do nothing all summer but bark their nads off, and the parents are no different. Then there's the Christina Aguilera with which we are assaulted on a regular basis.

Just sayin.