[Flight of the Felix]
We almost became single-pet owners today. Phil and I are sitting in the living room, eating tacos during his lunch break, when we hear a knock at the door. This is weird because we don't have any friends who would just drop by and we weren't expecting any post (that bit of British nounage is for JR). I answer it and it's the apartment manager, Carlos. He asks us if we've lost a ferret. We're pretty sure we haven't. I mean, Felix and Gonzo were just annoying the shit out of me while I was trying to unload the diswasher. Half an hour before. We locate Gonzo easily and I frantically search beneath the furniture for Felix, but he's nowhere. And he's not responding to his clicker.

Carlos tells us that another resident called and said they'd found a well-kept brown and white ferret running around outside. We follow Carlos outside, right across the courtyard to a neighbor's apartment. Carlos knocks on the door, we make small talk while listening to the people inside shouting at one another and at their enormous dog (who, incidentally, is the beast who leaves human-sized excrement on our lawn). A large lady in a tie-dyed shirt opens the door to greet us, and then runs to get this mystery ferret. Of course it's Felix, looking completely oblivious to the danger his life had been in for the past who knows how long. The woman, Heather, explains to us that she had been out walking the big dog, who spotted Felix in some monkey grass and lunged for him. She said she was trying to restrain the dog and she saw another neighbor and said, "Get your ferret! I can't hold the dog much longer!" And the neighbor was like, "That's not my ferret!" and blew her off.

So she took him into her apartment and called Carlos, who remembered that we were the tenants with the ferrets.

The scary thing is that we have no idea how he got outside. He either bolted when I sat the trash on the front stoop, or he bolted when Phil came inside. Those are the only two times the front door opened between the time Phil left for work (and they were still in the cage) and we found out he was missing. But I like to think that both of us would notice something like that. Apparently we wouldn't. I'm worried that he found some secret gnome passage that takes him from the laundry room to the outside, but surely we would have a critter infestation if access was that easy.

It really sucks that ferrets have no concept of their own mortality. Every time we open the door, they're like, "What's outside? Can I go out there? Let me go out there!!!" and, unlike most dogs or cats, would never be able to find their way back or even make it through the night without getting scooped up by a hawk or bitten in half by a big stupid dog.

Geez.