Apartment Woes

Apartment Woes; or, adventures in freezing a ferret

When we returned from our apartment search, with its numerous frustrations (but its final success), we were hot and tired, as we’d been out for five hours in the hundred-degree Texas summer.  As soon as we came inside, we noticed something important: it wasn’t any cooler.

Now ferrets, hailing as they do from Russia and other northern climes, ought not be exposed to temperatures above eighty-five degrees.  It was ninety in our apartment.

So we fiddled with the air conditioner controls, shut all the doors, closed the blinds, and turned off the lights we could live without.  The A/C was still blowing warm air, and our ferret was extremely sluggish.  If it’s possible for a ferret to look at once grumpy and disgruntled, ours had mastered the expression.  Anastasia drank her fill of the ice water we gave her and crawled under the couch, stretched out her full length with her hind feet sticking out from under the side.

Clearly, something had to be done.

So my husband gently scooped her up, carried her to the kitchen, a room she is usually barred from exploring, and, cradling her in one hand, stuck Anastasia in the freezer.

She came around slowly, sniffing the ice maker and frozen hamburgers with greater and greater interest.  Eventually she felt bold enough to venture onto the floor of the freezer itself, whose corners she investigated with a pink nose of contentment rather than a beige nose of displeasure.  After a five-minute freezer revival, Anastasia was her old self again, though she did retreat to the couch when we returned her to the living room (according to her instinct, it is cooler underground, and our couch is her closest urban equivalent).

An hour later, we figured out the problem: a flipped breaker switch.  Although it was hilarious, I’m glad we didn’t have to freeze the ferret any more than once.