That Time I Got Chased Down the Road by a …. Ferret?
At night.
My favorite time to run is at night, in the dark, when no one can see me, the stress of the day has ended and it’s so so quiet. I used to live in this very flat neighborhood that went for a couple miles in one direction. It was the perfect running scenario. Relatively safe and there were street lights. No sidewalks though so you had to run in the road. Which was probably a good thing given my propensity for tripping over curbs or what have you.
So I’m about 3/4 of the way through my run, feeling ‘I can conquer the world’ great. Then just as I am running past this storm drain, something comes running out of it into the street.
AHHHHH!!
I sort of expect it to keep running. I think it is a possum because it is too small to be a raccoon (which we had a LOT of). But it pauses. And I paused. I am wondering why it is not running away. We are looking at each other, in the dark. So I yell , “Go on! Beat it!” It sits up like it is listening. For a second there, I half expected it to respond in a human voice, like a cartoon animal. (“Pardon me, ma’am…”) Then it tentatively starts walking toward me!
AHHHHH!!
So I start jogging away, glancing over my shoulder. I am thinking — this is one weird possum…
It starts following me. I am seriously getting freaked out now. I jog a little more, it keeps following me, I turn around and stop and it stops and sort of sits up looking at me.
There is a street light so I can see better and what the heck — this is a ferret!
It comes closer and seriously acts like it wants me to pick it up! I like animals, don’t get me wrong, but I have never held a ferret and this one that just crawled out of the storm drain is not about to be my first. I mean. Really, Mr. Ferret. You don’t even know me!
So eventually I shake this fella and continue my run. I get the impression that he does not want to stray too far from the storm drain he crawled out of.
I tell the kids about it when I get home and they are unconvinced. It was a possum they tell me. You can barely see in daylight much less at night they say… Well no possum in the world acts like that. Not even zoo possums (do they have possums in zoos?).
So I start worrying about the ferret. I send an email out to the neighborhood group and start it off with — “I know I sound crazy but…”
Two days later there is a knock at the door. It is one of my neighbors and their teen daughter. “Are you the one that saw the ferret?” They had lost their ferret! Sure enough, they lived near the little guys favorite storm drain. So they tried and tried to find him but sadly, had no luck. Sigh. The circle of life….
THEN two days after that, we are eating dinner and my son offhandedly says, “Oh Mom, remember that ferret? I forgot to tell you. They got him back. He was sound asleep in their next door neighbor’s dog bed. Musta snuck through their doggy door.”
And all is right in the world again.
The End.
