Polebean Massacre

Alexandra Sargent-Colburn is by far my favorite ferret writer. Her stories are always humorous whether they are her fictional stories or factual ones of her ferrets. I had to add this one to my blog. I laughed hysterically as I envisioned the events. I know those that have ferrets will understand......................

I've been on the road a lot over the last few days and that's unusual,I don't travel much anymore. This time of year my husband's work calls him up north to Bar Harbor, Maine. It's a beautiful place, and all the more beautiful this early into the tourist season. By mid-June, the crush is brutal. My husband's boss is happy to have the two of us go up in our camper, it doesn't interfere with my husband's work. Paying fora few nights at the Bar Harbour KOA is a lot cheaper than paying for my husband to stay in a hotel by himself. We bring the motorcycle, zip around. It's a good time. We go nearly every year.My excellent niece Sarah, now nineteen (how did THAT happen?) stayed at our house to look after the dog, the Noble Allis Chompers, Sterling the Silver Cat, the chickens, and the ferrets. Sarah is a fine ferret sitter, having been introduced to them as a little shaver when I brought my first two home. She gives them lots of out time, plays with them, and in general just uses good sense where the ferrets are concerned.Well, She has never dealt with the likes of Caff-Pow before. There isa reason I named him after the ultra-caffeinated beverage on the crimeshow NCIS. He is around ten, eleven weeks old and we all agree that he is a "Woodland Piranha." He is a mustelid buzz-saw, it's tiring just to watch him run around. Leap around. Climb around. Fly. Levitate. His daily routine makes me think of those aeronautic daredevils of the Roaring Twenties, the guys who would stand on airplane wings and hold on while the plane swooped and looped over an awe-struck crowd.Caff-Pow? Energy to burn. At this stage in his life he has no guile.Everything is right in your face, unapologetic. Immediate. If he wants it he does it. Or tries to.It was very *hot* today, up around ninety. Too hot for comfort when you are wearing a mink coat. We called Sarah (we were driving home) and asked for a special favor. Last year I grew a small crop of pole beans.I'd never tried them before. I set two wooden pole tripods on the edge of the garden, and the vines obligingly climbed up the poles. Long,dangly green beans followed. What I didn't understand was that you have to pick them young, or they are as tough as plywood. I got a great cropof plywood pole beans. I put them in Ziplocs and stored them in my deepfreeze out of Yankee guilt. Don't think we actually *ate* any.We spoke to Sarah and asked her to go get one of the icy bags of pole beans and wrap it tightly in a T-shirt with some duct tape, and slip it on top of the topmost shelf in the boy's cage, right below the top most hammie. That gives the boys a cool place to sleep, they really enjoy that on hot days. Apparently she could not find the duct tape. Shet hought that she could just make a few knots in the T-shirt and the one gallon Ziplock would be secure.

Hah.

Caff-Pow had *nothing* better to do this afternoon than untie the T-shirt, and wreak havoc. This is one of those telling events that separates the ferret lover from the ferret admirer. The author MarkTwain once tried to define what *experience* is. Experience is the difference between carrying a cat upside-down by the tail for a mile,or simply imagining doing so. Only one of these actions yields palpable experience. Sarah lacks some fundamental ferrret experience. There is abig difference between duct tape, and a few knots.We got home, and I went to check on the boys. Sarah had gone out. I could not help but notice the shredded, limp pole beans on *every*shelf in the cage, all seven plastic levels. Then there were the shredded, limp pole beans in the three hanging hammies. There were shredded, limp pole beans on the bottom of the cage, in the litterbox,just below the spout of the water bottle. There were shredded, limp pole beans in the round fleece bed. In the hanging sack. In front of the J-feeder. I don't think that much pole bean material had been consumed, it had simply been masticated. Great word, that. A fancy word for cheeeewed. Every one of those beans had been cheeeewed. And spat out, and left for dead.(Sigh.) It was the great Pole Bean Massacre of 2009. The horror, the horror.
Alexandra in MA