March Feedback

Watch out for wounded weasels

The aforementioned Ian Scott-Parker also commented on our story about weasels and weasel words:

I always thought it amusing that 'ermine' (another name for the short-tailed weasel) was itself something of a weasel word. I often imagined Richard Dimbleby's portentous tones announcing that the Queen's robes were trimmed with weasel fur.

My daughter Alison kept weasels in the UK. One of them became pregnant, walked across the half positioned lid of the clothes washing machine, and tipped herself into the scalding water. The poor animal recovered, but her teats were badly burned, and she was unable to feed her young when they were born.

Alison and her mother, Deirdre, struggled valiantly to hand-rear the babies, but one by one they died. Deirdre was desperately trying to save the last one when the mother weasel became very agitated. Trying to defend her offspring, she attacked what she must have perceived as a predator.

Thinking she might need tetanus shots for her injuries, Deirdre telephoned our family doctor. He asked what was the problem, and Deirdre told him she had been bitten in the groin by a ferret. The poor man began laughing hysterically, and later was fulsome in his apologies for such unprofessional behavior.

It gets worse.

The doctor prescribed the shots, and Deirdre warned him that she had experienced a violent adverse reaction to previous medication. The doc said when that had been administered, the pharmaceutical companies were extracting the product from horse piss, but now the drug was synthesized there were no problems.

He damn near killed her. As soon as he gave her the shot, she went down like a sack of spuds, and had to be revived with adrenaline injections to get her heart going, and put on an oxygen supply to keep her breathing.

There are people who will tell you that ferrets are not dangerous!

There is an interesting expression used in Cumberland: "You will have to get up very early in the morning if you want to piss in a ferret's eye."

Helen Smith, webmaster of the Australian weasewlwords site, sent us this email:

Thank you for your fabulous article. When I get time, I will add a link to your site on our 'links' page.

I love the instructions on how to look for a lost ferret. My brother had them when I was growing up and they were always escaping. One night they got into the local park. We heard a young boy yell out 'I've got your ferret.' Next thing we heard 'Your ferret's got me.' He'd found Slasher.

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Another silhouette artist

Beth Lock, a columnist for MyMac.com, told us about a gifted but handicapped man, Gordon Vales, who tore (instead of cutting) marvelous silhouettes in Spokane, Washington.

"Gordon had an amazing talent.," she wrote in one of her columns. "He would take a piece of black construction paper, glance briefly at a person standing before him, and tear the person's silhouette from the paper using only his fingers. He learned to do this at age five in art class at the institution. The residents were not allowed scissors."

You can read Beth's moving story by clicking on MyMac.