I had chimney breast, now , I'v got a polecat.

Wednesday 16th June 2004.

Are you sick of polecat misadventures yet? Well so am I, and I have to
live through them.

The story continues.

So after the drama of the day before I was looking forward to a nice
quiet afternoon, I wanted to work on 'Joy' I wanted to clean my house.
I wanted to take it easy. I wanted to have no high excitement, no
mishaps, no misfortune and no bloody disasters. Asking too much of my
little life? You betcha!

I got in from my morning calls. Hoovering takes me at last three or
four times as long since getting the polecats. You wouldn't believe the
mess that two polies can make, so I set to and hoovered up. I let the
polecats out and pottered about a bit. Big fella kept going for Darcy
in a sexual manner. Darcy screamed and then went straight back and
asked him to do it again. They scampered and played. Their favourite
game was belting up the stairs at a million miles an hour and lying in
wait for the dog so that they could ambush her. Poor old Kali fell for
it every single time. It was probably lunchtime when I realised that
everything was quiet ? too quiet.

With an immediate sense of impending doom and foreboding, I've learned
now to not believe that they are okay until I know that they are for
sure, I went upstairs. The scene of their crimes lay before me, one of
Mark's socks, a teddy, a shoe, the contents of a pencil holder, the
holder itself, but no polecats. No scampering, no chooking. They could
have been curled up somewhere asleep but, after yesterday, I knew they
were not. The trail of debris led in the general direction of the
bathroom. A nibble of fear was just beginning to tingle in my lower
spine. Bathrooms meant plumbing, plumbing meant holes, holes meant
adventure (for a polecat anyway) adventure meant freedom. Oh
Hell.

The bathroom was in a similar state to the stairs. Every product
container overturned, bath scrunchies mauled until dead and left
discarded in a pool of spilled Pantene conditioner (three quid a
bottle, excuse me please) That could have harmed them Sooz, that might
have harmed them. I called out and heard, somewhere deep in the bowels
of the house, the patter of tiny feet. They were no longer in the
house, they were *in* the house. This wasn't good. I continued to call
to them in panic. What if they were lost and couldn't find their way
back out? The scampering became louder. Two pairs of feet not four.
Only one polecat. But, philosophical old me figured that one was a
fifty percent improvement on none.

Big lad's nose appeared out of a small hole at the side of the bath. I
tried to coax him out with pet names and soothitudes. He thought this
was a wonderful game and teased me, leaping forward but remaining just
out of reach in the hole. He'd pounce to the opening and when I went to
grab him, he'd scurry back chunttering happily all the time. "Come on
big fella, come on sweetheart. Come to Sooz." I kept my voice calm and
gentle. I forced myself to smile because the guidebooks say that polies
are very susceptible to mood changes. I crooned at him. "Come on son.
Come here you little bastard and I won't fry your bollocks for Mark's
tea. Who's a horrible little git then?" Each time I said something to
him, he wholeheartedly agreed and egged me on encouragingly while still
keeping one and a half inches out of reach. Oh, this was such
fun.

"Hah, so you think you're going to beat me do you, you little shit.
I'll show you who the best damned game player in this house is." I ran
downstairs and brought up a full pack of smoked back bacon. I hung
rashers of bacon all over the bathroom, just out of his reach so that
he'd have to jump for them and still miss. I'd show him who was the
tease master and when he poked his obnoxious little nose out next time,
I'd have him.

It worked. I got him and despatched him straight to his hutch. I did
relent though and gave him a small piece of bacon. I lowered the rest
and had rashers of bacon draped over the bath, along the toilet
cistern, round the U-bend. Any visitors going for a pee, would think
I'd gone loopy. Mind, I bet they'd have refused a bacon butty after
seeing where I keep it while the rest of the country keep theirs in the
fridge.

One down and one to go, I called him. I squeaked his toy, I sprawled on
the floor wedged between the loo and the bath and pressed my ear to the
ground. I lay there, silent, listening until I got cramp in my calf and
yelled out in agony.

I knew one thing for a certainty. Darcy was nowhere in, 'in', or around
this house. He was gone.

I sat up, saw the raised toilet seat. Remembered going for a pee
earlier and became convinced that I'd flushed poor Darcy down the
loo.

The only other possibility was that he'd taken the same route as the
hob and crawled along plumbing into interconnecting houses. Dear God.
Dear gracious beloved God, whom I shall always capitalise. Dear God in
heaven who would never let anything bad happen to me because I'm one of
your favourites, please, Sweet Jesus please, when it came to making a
decision about left or right turn at the wall, please ensure that he
turned left.

If he turned right, he would have passed through into next doors house.
They have just moved in. I haven't met them yet, they might be nice
people. If, on the other hand, he turned right he would have taken
himself into the old cow's house on the other side. The woman lives to
moan. She thrives on causing trouble. She is a right old bag.

The first time she complained to my landlord was when I had the
reptiles. A cricket had found its way from my house into hers. Crickets
are fantastic insects, they keep flies down, and they are good for a
house in summer. The lady next door found one, she should have been
grateful. Instead, she called out the council to fumigate and rang my
landlord to complain. She told him that she had lain awake all night
because she was terrified to close her eyes in case it attacked her. It
was a cricket for Christ sake, not a Bengali tiger. From time to time
they did escape from the vivs. I love the sound of cricket song in the
evenings my neighbour didn't share my love of all things tropical. My
landlord rang me. He was pissed off because this woman complained
repeatedly about Mac and his outbursts when he lived here. Now it
seemed it was beginning again. He asked me to, 'keep my crickets under
control,' What? I repeat. It's a cricket for Christ sake, not a trained
poodle.

The second time she complained to him was a few weeks ago after I'd
asked Marty to climb on my flat roof to clean my bedroom window. To do
this he had to first climb onto the wall that connects my house to
hers. I was with him, bunking him up. He was on her wall a matter of
five seconds. She was convinced that Marty was trying to burgle her and
that he only changed his mind after she'd caught him breaking into her
property.

She got herself all worked up because she felt under attack from a
marauding cricket, what the hell would she be like if she woke up to
come face to face with a playful polecat jumping all over her?

It was bad enough the thought of him somewhere in my house that would
need to be broken down to get him out, but the thought of him being in
her house-innards didn't bear thinking about. I decided that if, in the
next few days, I see either a builders van or Rentokill outside her
house, I'm leaving home quick.

I called and squeaked and whistled all damned day. Marty came home at
four o clock saw my face and his first words were, "Oh, God, what's
happened to them now?" We have a major polecatastrophe with them every
damned day. I dread going to the hutch for fear of what I might find
and Marty dreads coming home from school.

Six o clock, I was sitting at the computer, there was mad scuttling
followed by an alarming scraping, falling noise, followed by the now
familiar wail of a polecat in distress. Believe me, I know the sound
well, I sleep with it in my nightmares. He was behind the fire in the
living room. Thank God he was behind my fire, in my living room. Oh,
joy oh, bliss. It was not too big a deal. I've lost lizards behind
there before when they've crawled under the fire. I knew that behind
the fire, there is a blocked space with only a small flue hole exiting
to the chimney itself and that is filled by the flue pipe.

My joy was short lived. I removed the gas fire. I peeled off all the
electrical tape at the back of the fire holding the metal plate in
place. I got a screwdriver and unscrewed the plate itself. My living
room looked like a bombsite but it was nothing that couldn't be put
right. Finally I pulled the plate away with a huge grin of relief on my
face ? disaster, the hole at the back of the fire bore no hungry and
terrified polecat.

More mad scratching.

Realisation.

Oh no.

Darcy was literally in the wall cavity just above the fire.

It was with heavy heart that I went to get the hammer. He was making a
lot of noise, so I knew he was okay and that any injuries sustained
were only minor. There was nothing for it but to begin knocking hell
out of my chimney breast. He'd slid fifteen feet down the inside of the
wall, there seemed little point in leaving it for now in the hope that
he'd find a way back, he wouldn't be able to get back up. It would be a
slow and cruel death for him trapped in the wall. And we would have to
listen to him dying for days.

It didn't take long to break through the plaster with the claw end of
the hammer. The problem, of course was a) not hitting a gas pipe, and
b) there was always the possibility of braining poor Darcy with the
hammer, a thought that was becoming more appealing with each crashing
piece of rubble.

I have a hole. It's not a massive hole, but there is no getting away
from the fact that it is a polecat (and some) sized hole in my living
room wall. I have two, count `em, two ruined kitchen units, I have a
bank balance that was already seriously overdrawn, now it is terminal.
By this time next week it's highly probable that two, innocent little
polecats will have caused the total downfall of my house.

Darcy was fine, hungry, full of tales of his holiday but fine.

I put him in the hutch and awaited the next disaster.

I only had two minutes and thirty seconds to wait. I hadn't even had a
cig to recover from the pervious crisis.

The hob had missed him, or had, at least, missed raping him. As soon as
Darcy's feet touched ground in the hutch, the hob was on him. It was
the worst attempt yet and I had to separate them. The hob wasn't doing
Darcy any permanent damage at all but the little polecat sounded awful.
I'd had enough. I rang Col and asked him to come and talk about the big
Lad's future with us. My nerves were raw and frazzled.

He came and we put the polies back in together, within seconds the hob
had grabbed Darcy round the neck and was sexually laying into him. Col
said, "I'm not having that," and made the decision for me.

The hob has gone. I feel very sad. He had changed, in two days, from
being a vicious and unhandleable polecat to being, if not tame, then
well on the way there. I didn't want him to go. After the trauma with
the kitchen incident I'd bonded with him too. But, the only reason we
got him was to give Darcy a happy life and getting raped by an animal
three times your size probably isn't many people's idea of happiness,
though I do plead the hob's innocence on the actual charge of rape as
no penetration ever took place given the length of one cat in
comparison to the other, your honour. The big hob would have made a
wonderful pet, if he'd just managed to curtail his manly
impulses.

We were back to the same point, one small polecat, too young to face
cold weather alone, which would lapse into a depression without a
playmate. Col and I drove around everyone we could collectively think
of with ferrets or polecats. I don't like the countryman's rough ways
with their animals. One man had a small polecat with a fourteen litter.
He was going to drown the cat and all fourteen kitts because she'd
committed the cardinal sin of having too many babies which would
inevitably grow up weak and sickly. I have had great success fostering
kitts out to mothers with a smaller litter count. It was too much
trouble for him. He had other cats with smaller litters, they'd serve
his purpose leaving room for him to barter a new bloodline. I didn't
have room for the cat and her fourteen new born kitts ? but Col did. I
bought them all and, 'Aul Tom' charged the full market price of an
established youngster for each of them, the old bugger. He was going to
kill them anyway but he wouldn't lower his price because he saw a
sucker standing before him. He knew that I wasn't going to let him do
that and he could have asked twice the price and got away with it. We
both knew it.Col says he'll split the returns with me when he comes to
sell them on, but I'm not bothered. Seventy five quid for fifteen lives
isn't a bad price. When we got back to Col's, we checked all the new
arrivals over. One of the kitts is most certainly going to die, I
think. Three sets two of three and one of two have been farmed out to
other whelping Jills. When I left they were all feeding from their
foster mothers. Initial signs are good.There is so much animal cruelty
around that most of us turn a blind eye to it because it's somehow seen
as okay because it's the 'country way' or it's being done for food, not
fun. I know of three people, nice people, who run, unlicensed rodent
farms. They breed rats solely for the supply of reptile food. There's a
good profit to be made. At my maximum, I had four hundred rats, in
fourteen 'flavours', and fifty mice. I was often approached with a view
to killing and selling my animals for food. I could no more kill an
animal than slice off my son's arm. I used to spend two hundred pounds
a fortnight on frozen rats, when I had four hundred free gratis rats in
my out buildings.

From our, and Darcy's, point of view, the evening was unsuccessful. I
only had one option left. Col offered to loan me one of his Jills until
we could get a kitt of similar age to Darcy. I hated the idea. For one
thing, look at my track record this week. Secondly there's the
attachment problem. Thirdly, I didn't want to introduce Darcy to
another friend just to have to take it away again later. But it was all
we could do.

The only Jill's he has that aren't currently whelping are Darcy's
mother and a very rare albino pure polecat. I didn't want Darcy to see,
or bond with, his mother again just to have to separate them later, it
wouldn't be fair on either Thistle or Darcy. So, while Col pulled a wry
face, I reluctantly agreed to borrow Thorn, the albino Jill.

Thorn, is a sweet natured lady. She's big for a Jill, well fed, with a
beautiful conditioned coat. She's in tip top health is as gentle as a
lamb, both with us and Darcy. He is happy without having to be raped
for it, and I am terrified that something is going to suddenly topple
over on Thorn, or that she will develop some disease never before heard
of in the polecat world, or that she suddenly becomes fatally allergic
to Wednesdays. Let's face it, anything could happen.

When I had the sanctuary, Col was always asking me for his own
reptiles. The only way I would let him have one of his own was if he
kept it with me. He was terrible with animals, he'd have killed it in a
week (like I've done well with the polies recently!) Col didn't know we
were going to his pens last night. I have to say that I was very
impressed. The animals, with the exception of Thistle who has just
finished whelping, are all in excellent health. The pens were spotless
all freshly cleaned out. There was some dog dirt in the terier run, but
with seven dogs there would be. It was obvious that he does power wash
it very night. The birds, dogs and polecats all, without exception,
looked well maintained and happy. I'm proud and impressed. I think my
son grew up when I wasn't looking.

This morning, Thorn is pottering and playing with Kali. Darcy is in
training to become the next Andrex dog. He has brought a toilet roll,
bigger than himself, downstairs. He keeps falling over it. It's all
over the place but it has kept him quiet, amused and out of trouble or
danger for over an hour. The upstairs doors are closed, the kitchen
door is closed. The fire place is secured in place. Everything that can
fall, poison or maim is out of the way. What can possibly happen?

Please Lord, no more polecat stories, they cost too much.