No life
Fecund ferrets
Jeremy Clarke
Last week Fatima's and Selma's vaginas swelled up. I was dreading their coming into season this year because it is said that ferrets sicken and die if they aren't mated, and my vasectomised hob ferret, a big, smelly, nippy sod, ran away last autumn. (If you are reading this, Suleiman, please come home.) Ferrets are 'photo-periodic' breeders, which means they come into season hence the tumescences — as the days begin to draw out. As Fatima and Selma's hutch is lit by a security light at night, they gener- ally come into season three weeks or even a month before other ferrets in the district, on account of which they have attained a certain celebrity in local ferret-owning circles.
Being hobless, and not wanting my jills to get out of condition, once vaginas start- ed swelling up I had to act, and fairly quickly. But what to do? Nobody else in our ferret club possesses a vasectomised hob — they are all too tight to fork out the £20 fee charged by the local vet for per- forming the operation. And the last thing I want is the prospect of two litters of ferret kits on my hands, eating me out of house and home, biting my fingers to shreds as a thank you, and nobody wanting to buy them. You can't even give ferret kits away around here in the spring, what with every- body trying to off-load kits at the same time, and the rabbiting finished till autumn.
When I rang our club chairman to get his advice on the matter, he said why not bring my jills over to his place and put them to Nelson, his stud hob. With any luck, he said, Fatima and Selma might eat their own litters anyway; otherwise I could always `make sailors' out of the kits as soon as they are born.
There was a time, in pre-myxomatosis days, when our chairman was catching so many rabbits with ferrets he had to invest in a donkey to carry them all home. So he. knows what he's talking about. The follow- ing day I took Fatima and Selma over to his smallholding, which is on the edge of Dartmoor.
When I arrived, he was all upset because a fox had just stolen one of his ducks. An otherwise placid, nature-loving man, our chairman has a great antipathy to foxes, and devotes an ever increasing part of his dwindling energies trying to assassinate them. He often stands in his field at night, squeaking, hoping to entice the more inquisitive ones within range of his 12-bore — a more common practice than one might suppose, apparently. He also sets wire nooses, with great deliberation, in his hedges. And occasionally he manages to shoot them, by the light of the moon, from his bedroom window.
But in spite of his killing quite a few, every time I see him he's complaining bit- terly because a fox has taken something or other, often in broad daylight: a cherished hen perhaps, or an expensive cockerel, or one of his gleanies. Come to think of it I haven't seen Joan, his wife, about the place for some time, either.
And my word he does get cross about it. I've read in second-hand nature books that in other parts of Britain people have pic- turesque, even affectionate names for the Vulpes — names like Reynard, Charlie or Tod. If our chairman's conversation is any- thing to go by, however, the Dartmoor name for a fox is either 'the bastard', or another, even more horrible word, which would almost certainly never be found in any nature book, whether second-hand or brand-new.
Nelson was curled up fast asleep in his straw when we lifted his lid. I took Fatima out of her carrying box and placed her on the straw beside him. There was a delay of about two seconds, till the leading molecule of Fatima's sexual scent penetrat- ed to Nelson's dormant brain. Then Nelson sat bolt upright, as if woken by an urgent message that the combined French and Spanish fleet had been spotted off the star- board bow. It took a further two seconds for him to orient himself in time and space, grab poor Fatima by the back of the neck with his teeth, drag her around the hutch twice, get her up against a wall, and let her have it. It is a surprisingly violent business, coition, ferret-style, and poor Fatima was chattering, then screaming alarmingly. 'Go on, my son!' said our chairman, leering las- civiously at the rape-in-progress. I said nothing for a while. Then I could bear it no longer and said, 'Do you think he's hurting her, Mr Roberts?'
Previous page
