Shed full of baby ferrets declares summer officially OPEN
In Cranbrook, Kent, the season doesn't arrive by calendar — it arrives as 'a barely perceptible squeal' from a shed, and this year it squealed in early May: the first litter of ferret kits had landed, and summer was GO. Nature runs the best notification system and it requires no phone!
The details only get better. Baby ferrets arrive in litters of up to FOURTEEN. Ferret courtship ends with the couple 'fast asleep, gently wound into a single coil' — a phrase we are having embroidered. The collective noun for ferrets is 'a business', which means this diarist is technically running a business from his shed, staffed entirely by employees with fur.
And now, at two months old, the kits are 'thickly furred, eyes wide open and looking to explore the world' while their exhausted mothers drag them back to the nest until they can only slump and watch them totter off anyway. Every parent of every species just nodded.
Next chapter: finding each kit a home among 'the colourful characters' of the local ferret fraternity, wrapping up at the September horse fair amid the clatter of hooves. A summer measured in squeals, coils and new beginnings — the country year is the good calendar. Another gift!