Hey! This is my Christmas story in July!
This was written on a total impulse, Stuart Mclean's Vinyl Cafe story, Turtles style! Cowabunga!
Christmas with a Ferret
It all began when Michelangelo came home one day, a cloth bag draped over his shoulder.
"Honey!" he called as he slid through the door, "I'm home!"
Before his brother could say anything, he dashed upstairs with his bag and didn't come down until dinner. Being so close to Christmas, no one thought to question the bag. It is, after all, a season for secrets.
The next night, when Mike was just about to go out for patrol with Donatello, he wandered into Leonardo's room, "Promise you won't go in my bedroom," he said.
"I promise," said Leo, waving him away.
When Leo walked past the door a few minutes later, he noticed a hand lettered sign on Mikey's door:
Do Not Enter
Top Secret
This Means You
'This Means You' was underlined three times, and there was a skull and crossbones drawn at the bottom of the page. Leo was about to turn away when a noise came from Mike's room.
Something was moving in there.
He press his head to the door just as Raphael walked by, "He has Leatherhead's pet ferret," Raph said archly
"The ferret?" said Leo.
And then, promise be damned, Leo threw open the bedroom door.
Not a wise decision.
The ferret was perched on Mike's bedpost, glaring at him. The room smelled like a weasel hole.
Leo slammed the door shut and pressed his back against it.
They had a family counsel that night when Master Splinter was asleep.
"It's going back," said Raphael firmly.
The ferret was sound asleep, draped around Michelangelo's neck like a scarf.
"He has a name. His name is Ralph," said Mike, chucking the ferret under the chin.
The ferret didn't move.
"That's 'cause it's dead," said Donatello.
"It smells dead," said Leonardo.
"His name is Ralph," said Mike again, peevishly.
"No way," said Raph, "No ferrets allowed," he looked at Leo, "Right?"
Now Leonardo had just returned for two years of heavy training, and was doing every thing he could to stay on his brothers' good sides after his fight with Raphael. He didn't particularly want a ferret in the sewers over the holidays, but he didn't want to upset his baby brother.
He sat across from Raph but he was staring at his hands, "It is Christmas, Raph. This is what you do at Christmas, isn't it? You put yourself out. You open your home to people who do have a place to go,"
Raphael couldn't believe what he was hearing. He pointed at the comatose ferret draped around his brother's neck, "That is not a people," he said, "That is a vermin. There's no room at the inn,"
Leo smiled ruefully, "Could we have Donnie build a little manger in the basement for Ralph?" he asked.
"A manger!" said Raph, "A manger! Casey thinks he has a rat in the closet of his apartment. Maybe the rat would like to come for Christmas. Maybe Don could build a manger for the rat,"
"Thanks, Raph," said Mikey.
Raphael helped Donnie build a ferret cage in the basement, what else could he do?
Michelangelo came downstairs, the ferret still asleep, still hung around his neck, "Do you wanna try?" asked Mikey, unwrapping Ralph from around his neck and holding him out like a stuffed toy, "He won't wake up,"
His brothers looked at the limp ferret and shook their heads; April said, "I'll try,"
Michelangelo carefully arranged the sleeping ferret around his friend's shoulders. It was lighter then she expected, and softer. As the ferret snuggled against her, April thought fleetingly that was too bad you weren't allowed to wear fur anymore. She felt kind of elegant with a ferret around her.
She ran her hands self-consciously through her hair, "What do think?" she asked the others, striking a pose.
"Beautiful," said Raphael, "Wait till we get you the rat,"
Michelangelo took the sleeping ferret downstairs, Klunk the cat hissing uncharacteristically at them as they passed his dish.
It took three hours for Ralph the ferret to figure out how to open the cage in the basement. Ralph awoke around dawn, had and rink of water and something to eat and then fiddled with the latch on the cage. The door swung open. Ralph walked around the basement for a few minutes before curling up in the pocket of a red down ski jacket, and fell asleep again.
A few hours later, Raphael came downstairs, picked the jacket up, and threw it in the dryer. He wanted to fluff the down up.
He pressed the start button.
He walked away.
He only got as far as the stairs.
There was a thumping sound coming out of the dryer, the sort of thumping you get when you try to dry a pair of sneakers. There was a squealing, grinding sound, too.
Raphael walked back to the machine, squatted and peered through the glass door, and he saw the ferret fly by, its four paws extended as it cart-wheeled around, looking like one of those cats you see stuck to the back of car windows.
Raph wrenched the door open and the basement was eerily silent. There was no sight or sound from the ferret ('Uh-oh,' thought Raph).
He stuck his head in the dryer. Not a wise decision.
The ferret burst out of the machine like a wolverine on steroids. All Raphael saw was a blur of fur sailing past his face, and then absolutely nothing. He looked around, but the ferret was gone. His brothers joined the search. They looked everywhere, but as far as they could see, the house was ferretless. There was a vacancy of ferrets. A ferret void. As far as ferrets were concerned there was nothing. Naught. Zilch. Goose egg. Sweet Fanny Adams.
The ferret was more then gone, it was all gone.
"Don't worry," said Master Splinter, "I'm sure he'll come back,"
Not sure were Ralph would come back, Don and Leo spent an hour the next morning taping ferret warnings all over.
'Check for ferret', it said on the fridge and the toaster and the microwave.
'Ferret check', read the oven and the washing machine and the dryer.
By the end of the week, checking for the ferret had become an unconscious reflex. Before any of them turned on the oven, they would rattle the door, "Ferret! Ferret! Ferret!"
They were all terrified that they'd have to send Michelangelo over to Leatherhead with a dead ferret tucked under his arm, "Which," said Raphael, "Would be a damn slight better then not finding the body,"
April was the first to spot Ralph, on the weekend. Well, she didn't really see him. What she saw a flash of fur in her peripheral vision.
"I think it was Ralph. It was definitely fur," she said.
From that day on, their days were punctuated with glimpses of fur on the fly. They'd go into a room and turn on a light, and not so much see as sense the vanishing ball of fur. The ferret was moving through the sewer like a trout moving up a stream; they saw flashes of him and the occasional ripple on the surface, but that was all. At night they would lie in bed and hear, 'scurryscurryscurry smash'. They'd get up and go downstairs and the Christmas tree would be swinging wildly back and forth, and an assortment of ornaments would be lying on the ground.
Three mornings in a row they woke up to find someone had been digging in the pot of Master Splinter's bonsai tree, the dirt flung all over the living room. The first time this happened, Klunk spotted them and began to back away, almost holding up his paws as if to say, 'It wasn't me!'.
The week before the Christmas, Raphael had an idea, "I have an idea," he said, "If I knew where it slept, I could get it. I was thinking I could track it to its den,"
"You could track it to its den?" said Leonardo.
"If it left tracks," said Raph.
That night, when everyone was in bed, Raphael took the flour the flour shifter and sprinkled icing sugar all over the kitchen floor. It was such satisfying work that he did the hallway and the living room, too. When he had finished, their home looked pleasingly seasonal, as if there had been a light dusting of snow.
The family slept fitfully, and at six am they woke up and bounded downstairs to the kitchen, full of hope, and there…there was Klunk the cat, licking the last bit of sugar off the floor.
Klunk looked at them all, crowded in the doorway, burped, took two unsteady steps, vomited, and fell over.
That was the night April said, "I think the ferret is pregnant,"
The turtles stared at her blankly.
"I can just tell," she said.
"You can just tell?" said Donatello.
"Women know these things," said April.
"These things about a ferret," said Raphael.
"I saw him yesterday, he's getting bigger," said April, "He took one of the oven mitts; I think he's making a nest,"
Michelangelo, who had been listening with growing dismay, said in a small voice, "Excuse me. Ralph can't have babies. Men can't have babies," he said more a question then a statement of fact, his hand creeping unconsciously towards his stomach, "Can they?"
The next morning, Leonardo took his shift to hunt for Klunk, who had also taken to hiding in the days before Christmas, and came across a crumpled letter from Leatherhead in Michelangelo's room. He took it downstairs and gathered Raph and Don together before smoothing it out on a table and handing it to Master Splinter, "Thought you might want to see this," he said.
The letter was a brochure entitled 'Caring for your Ferret'. They started on page 3, 'Finding a Lost Ferret'.
'The first place to place to look for your lost ferret,' read the brochure, 'is in places the ferret couldn't possibly go. They love little holes; crawl around on your stomach and look for hole in the floor, under cabinets, etc.'
"It's living in the walls," said Raph.
"No way," said Leo, "You aren't cutting any holes in the walls,"
"I wasn't even thinking that," protested Raph, sliding his Sais back into their sheaths sheepishly.
They kept reading and came to a paragraph called 'Missing Objects,' "Ferrets love to swipe things and drag them into the most inaccessible places. Keep a close eye on your keys and wallet, or you'll always be missing them,'
"Hey," said Mikey, bounding in from the living room and reading over Don's shoulder, "Maybe we've had a ferret for years,"
Maybe you have a ferret.
It was like living with a poltergeist. You never knew what was going to happen next. One night, as they watched a re-run of 'It's a Wonderful Life', a plastic shopping bag humped its way quickly through the room. Two days later a creature with a body of fur and the head of a cardboard toilet paper tube careened by them, bouncing of the walls and vanishing down the hall. It was too much for Klunk, who (when he wasn't hiding) began to lick him paws neurotically, wouldn't stay in a room by himself, and mewed incessantly when anyone, especially Mikey, tried to leave him home alone.
Then, it was quiet. There was no sight of Ralph in the few days before Christmas, "I'm worried," said Mike.
The day of Christmas Eve, April and Casey came over together, two bag of presents wrapped at their feet. April was wearing a fur stole, "My mother's, " she said proudly.
Raphael was well into the spirit of the season and took their coats, but he refuse to touch the stole as no one could convince him in hadn't been scraped of the road somewhere and then fluffed up a little. Leo took it from April in the end, draping over April coat on the rack.
They went to bed early that night, and didn't awaken until 9'o clock the next morning. They actually had to wake Mikey up.
"I just cannot believe it," mused Master Splinter, "Sleeping in on Christmas Day,"
They filed down the stairs with Mikey in the lead, when suddenly he stopped abruptly.
" Uh-oh," he said.
Leo bumped into Mikey, Master Splinter bumped into Leo, Don bumped into Master Splinter, April bumped into Don, Casey bumped into April, Raph bumped into Casey, "Uh-oh?" thought Raph.
Only Mikey could fully see the living room, the only one who could see Ralph, the missing ferret, and Klunk the cat snuggled together, the only one who could see the nest of shredded wraping paper between them, the only one who could see the trio of mewling ferret babies.
"Four," said April, pointing to the baby everyone had missed, which was snuggled contently on Klunk's back.
It was, maybe, their best Christmas ever, everyone so taken with the ferret babies that they had to remind each other to open presents. Their home was full to bursting with feelings of peace and goodwill. Ralph was back, and clearly she was here to stay, and Mikey could return her triumphantly to Leather head with her and her brood.
After supper, they sang carols and watched the baby ferret nuzzling Klunk. Ralph had disappeared, but no one seemed to mind, least of all Klunk.
Around ten that night, Casey and April had to go. Raphael was sprawled on the couch in a post dinner stupor but made a move towards them. April just held up her hand, "Don't get up, we've called a taxi," she said.
Raph watched from the couch as she hugged Mikey goodbye, blew kisses to him, Don and Leo, and Master Splinter, then put on her coat and picked up her fur stole and dropped it around her neck.
Raphael squinted at her and struggled to get up, struggled to say, "That's…not your scarf, April," but all he could do was watch in horror as April fished out the large gold brooch that held her stole in place.
Which is when the ferret sneezed, or as far as April was concerned, her stole sneezed. April looked at her stole, her stole was looking back at her. April blinked. Her stole blinked back.
April screamed, and Ralph, who could the pin approaching her stomach scrambled down April's leg and ripped out of the room like a bat out of hell.
She didn't come back at all that night.
However, there was only so much Klunk could do to supplicate the quartet of mewling ferret babies. Ralph sulked back to feed the kits the next morning. They were all happily snuggled in the cage in the basement. Donatello took the lock of the door, and Ralph was free to come an go as she pleased.
A week later, the turtles walked through the sewer together, the happy ferret family carried by Mikey in a cardboard box. He wanted to say his last goodbyes, so his brothers left him there to find Leatherhead around the corner.
After a heated discussion on ferret gestation periods, Mikey proudly carried the box to Leatherhead. His brothers walked home without him, so they will never know the effect that Ralph and his three babies had left on their large friend.
A few days later, Leo will be going in and out of their bedrooms looking for a sweater Casey had said he had left, and on Michelangelo's door will be a hand letter sign:
Do Not Enter
Top Secret
This Means YOU
The End