Ferret Anxiety
by Miriam Kotzin
You open your email, skim the senders and subjects. You see a heading “ferret anxiety.” You don’t recognize the sender. So? You didn’t recognize cutiepie10018@yahoo.com, either, and that was your college roommate. Does this email explain how to tell when a ferret is anxious, or offer help for anxious ferrets, or does it describe a new syndrome named ferret anxiety?
Although you are have been anxious for a long time, nonetheless you are puzzled. Your anxiety has been diagnosed as free-floating. Until now, your anxiety had nothing to do with ferrets, although you are certain you would not want one as a pet, constantly nosing about in crevasses and corners where it has no business.
You click ferret anxiety for a preview. The message is unintelligible. You remember, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” which remains an unsolved puzzle. The scattered words in this mail and the numbers make no sense to you. You ask yourself why you have been singled out to receive this coded message. If you ignore it, you believe some disaster will befall you or those you love, perhaps the entire country–frogs. boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the first-born. All these will come to pass even more surely than if you had failed to send along a chain letter.
You ask yourself repeatedly, “What is ferret anxiety?” Quick hairy snakes, ferrets are, with legs. You shudder thinking about a ferret, lurking, and what was it you saw just now, a swift shadow on the floor?
For weeks you will murmur the phrase “ferret anxiety.” Your friends will overhear you, watch you jerk your head to catch clear sight of the fleeting movement near your feet. You see it many times a day. You dare not try to explain. Finally, you understand.