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Fair warning:  this column contains a description of a ferret doing something you might not want in your memory banks.
 
There’s just nothing funnier to humans than seeing animals in wacky situations or exhibiting outlandish, usually human-like behavior. Somebody just sent me the YouTube link to Mishka the Talking Husky. Off-camera, Mishka’s owners coo, “I looooove you, Mishka.” And after a few prompts, Mishka very clearly howls, “Iiiii uhhhh woooo. Owwwww. Iiiii uhhh woooo.”
 
I must be jaded. The Pledge of Allegiance would have been impressive, but to me, “talking” requires an occasional consonant. I would have been happy with, “All aboard for Hoboken,” but “iiii uhhh oooo” didn’t fire a single endorphin for me. I can ask my dog how I like my oysters, and she’ll say “Raw! Raw! Raw!” but that doesn’t make her an orator.
 
I prefer the pure-entertainment animal videos that make no lofty claims – like the dancing cockatoo, the poodle in the conga line, or the skateboarding bulldog. What’s so cute and hilarious is that they’ll do it for fun or for a single treat, especially precious considering that the average human won’t get off the couch for a single bite of anything: “Stand all the way up for a Cheeto? Nah. How about a Big Mac?”
 
We were visiting my aunt and uncle one day when suddenly – KA-WHONG! – a loud gonging crash sent a shock wave through the house.  As my parents and I exchanged alarmed looks, my aunt and uncle exchanged a tired one.  
 
“Bo’s hungry,” explained my uncle.  Their bovine mixed-breed dog Bo previously had a bad habit of dragging his plastic bowl all over the yard and they’d have to hunt it down at mealtime. My uncle nailed it to the porch, and Bo promptly chewed it into an abstract colander-like sculpture. So they got a 15-pound iron bowl that Bo could neither drag nor chew.  However, the brute could lift the thing about a foot and a half, and when it hit the wooden porch from that height, it shook the windows and alerted the inhabitants that he could go for a nibble. 
 
Odd animal behavior came up at a party recently. Someone smiled at a mutual friend and said, “Have you heard about C’s ferret?” I confessed I hadn’t, so C told the story. Seems the ferret fell in love with a mop and would drag it upstairs by its “hair” and make mad, frenetic, Pepé Le Pew love to it a couple of times a day. (Ferrets belong to the same family as minks, so insert your own joke here.)
 

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I thought, “What an insane animal.” Then it occurred to me that, on the other hand, the mop never had a headache or pouted, and gift holidays slid past it unnoticed.  It didn’t interrogate the ferret about where it had been, or why it friended an old girlfriend on Facebook, or even care if the ferret was seeing another mop. It didn’t require dinner to get in the mood, or ask no-win questions about the size of its butt. Then it occurred to me that my wife was going to read this, and that I had better remind her that my job is to write jokes, so sometimes I have to imagine what it’s like for all those unlucky guys out there who don’t have a perfect mate like I do.  Then I bought her a little something “just because” and made reservations at The Bristol.