We all have dreams, fantasies and aspirations on behalf of the animals in our lives. We envision them acting out their lives on a dramatic public stage or fulfilling some exalted destiny. There is a television show called Supermarket Sweep which features three different people running frantically around a supermarket grabbing expensive items. Their shopping activity is narrated as it were a sporting event by a play-by-play announcer. The exalted destiny which my family imagines for our three goats is that they be made contestants on Supermarket Sweep, their rampage through the produce and bakery aisles dramatically narrated by the play-by-play announcer. Difficult as it may seem to believe, there are people who imagine a stage even more exalted and deeds even more dramatic than despoiling supermarket produce and baked goods, which brings us to the new Ferret Chronicles of Richard Bach. Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, has ten ferrets at home, and has divined in their natures a nobility and determination which not even the most delusional goat owner could discover in his animals. The fantasy world he has created for them sets up ferrets as the rescuers and caretakers of animals in distress. For ferrets the highest ideal is to preserve the lives of other animals. Unlike other animal adventure books the Ferret Chronicles focus on achieving a kind of profound spiritual state through the selfless action of rescuing others. "The devoted and courageous ferrets who risk their lives to save others at sea" in Rescue Ferrets at Sea, confront storms and shipwrecks, natural forces, rather than what readers of The Redwall Chronicles might have expected, say a band of vicious rat pirates led by a formidable, but demented wolverine captain. The central idea of the Ferret Chronicles is that in achieving a sublime mental state ferrets will be able to see evidence of a higher power which supports their rescuing destiny. Air Ferrets’s Aloft, the companion of Rescue Ferrets at Sea, features "angel ferret fairies" who employ tiny helicopters to aid distressed ferret pilots. For example, had pilot Stormy Ferret "looked out her window that moment with serene and loving spirit, Stormy would have seen a tiny helicopter...Not expecting angel ferret fairies beside her window, however; she did not turn to look." Bethany and Chloe Ferret, however, are more attuned to the sublime state than Stormy. As they prepare to sacrifice their lives to save others at sea, they feel "a strange and perfect peace." At this point the ferret deity appears, "a small sable-colored ferret, looking upon them with the most exquisite knowing love" who tells the pair, after a "forever-second" in which they "remembered who they were, where they had come from, why they had wanted these lifetimes on earth," that this was not their "time to cross the bridge." Am I simply jealous that my goats are shallower than Bach’s ferrets, or are Bach’s ferret books simply weird by any standard. Only time will tell. |
