[Repost from alt.buddha.short.fat.guy]
 
As popularized at the now-infamous MCAoRBMQHB&PC129thAPOaFRP, I present
for
your reading pleasure...
 
                        T H E  K I N G  O F  T H E
                        F E R R E T  L E G G E R S
                              A true story
 
                              DONALD KATZ
 
Mr. Reg Mellor, the "king of ferret-legging," paced across his tiny
Yorkshire miner's cottage as he explained the rules of the English sport 
that he has come to dominate rather late in life. "Ay lad," said the 
72-year-old champion, "no jockstraps allowed. No underpants--nothin' 
whatever. And it's no good with tight trousers, mind ye. Little 
bah-stards have to be able to move around inside there from ankle to ankle."
 
Some 11 years ago I first heard of the strange pastime called
ferret-legging, and for a decade since then I have sought a publication 
possessed of sufficient intelligence and vision to allovv me to travel to 
northern England in search of the fabled players of the game.
 
Basically the contest involves the tying of a competitor's trousers at the
ankles and the subsequent insertion into those trousers of a couple of
peculiarly vicious fur-coated, footlong carnivores called ferrets. The
brave contestant's belt is then pulled tight, and he proceeds to stand 
there in front of the judges as long as he can, while animals with claws 
like hypodermic needles and teeth like number 16 carpet tacks try their 
damndest to get out.
 
From a dark and obscure past, the sport has made an astonishing comeback
in the past 15 vears. When I first heard about ferret-legging, the world 
record stood at 40 painful seconds of "keepin' 'em down," as the~ sav in 
ferret-legging circles. A few years later the dreaded one-minute mark was 
finallv surpassed. The current record--implausible as it may seem -- now 
stands at an awesome 5 hours and 26 minutes, a mark reached last year by 
the gaudily tattooed 72-year-old little Yorkshireman with the waxed 
military mustache who now stood two feet away from me in the mi(ldle of 
the room, apparently undoing his trousers.
 
"The ferrets must have a full mouth o' teeth," Reg Mellor said as he
fiddled with his belt. "No filing of the teeth; no clipping. No dope for 
you or the ferrets. You must be sober, and the ferrets must be hungry  -- 
though any ferret'll eat yer eyes out even if he isn't hungry."
 
Reg Mellor lives several hours north of London atop the thick central seam
of British coal that once fueled the most powerful surge into modernity in
the world's history. He lives in the city of Barnsley, home to a
quarter-million downtrodden souls, and the brunt of many derisive jokes 
in Great Britain. Barnsley was the subject of much national mirth 
recently when "the most grievously mocked town in Yorkshire" -- a place 
people drive miles out of their way to circumvent -- opened a tourist 
information center. Everyone thought that was a good one.
 
When I stopped at the tourist office and asked the astonished woman for a
map, she said, "Ooooh, a mup eees it, luv? No mups 'ere. Noooo." She did,
however, know the way to Reg Mellor's house. Reg is, after all, 
Barnsley's only reigning king.
 
Finally, then, after 11 long years, I sat in front of a real
ferret-legger, a man among men. He stood now next to a glowing fire of 
Yorkshire coal as I tried to interpret the primitive record of his long 
life, which is etched in tattoos up and down his thick arms. Reg finally 
finished explaining the technicalities of this burgeoning sport.
 
"So then, lad. Any more questions for I poot a few down for ye?"
 
"Yes, Reg."
 
"Ay, whoot then?"
 
"Well, Reg," I said. "I think people in America will want to know. 
Well . . since you don't wear any protection . . . and, well, I've heard 
a ferret can bite your thumb off.  Do they ever -- you know?"
 
Reg's stiff mustache arched toward the ceiling under a sly grin. "You
really want to know what they get up to down there, 'eh?"  Reg said, 
looking for all the world like some working man's Long John Silver. 
"Well, take a good look."
 
Then Reg Mellor let his trousers fall around his ankles.
 
A SHORT DIGRESSION: A word is in order concerning ferrets, a weasel-like
animal well known to Europeans but, because of the near extinction of the
black-footed variety in the American West, not widely known in the United 
States.
 
Alternatively referred to by professional ferret-handlers as
"shark-of-the-land" a "piranha with feet," "fur-coated evil," and "the 
only four legged creature in existence that kills just for kicks," the 
common domesticated ferret -- Mustela putorius -- has the spinal 
flexibility of a snake and the jaw musculature of a pit bull. Rabbits, 
rats, and even frogs run screaming from hiding places when confronted 
with a ferret. Ferreters  -- those who hunt with ferrets, as opposed to 
putting them in their pants -- sit around and tell tales of rabbits 
running toward hunters to surrender after gazing into the torch-red
eyes of an oncoming ferret.
 
Before they were outlawed in New York State in the early part of the
century, ferrets were used to exterminate rats. A ferret with a string on 
its leg, it was said, could knock off more than a hundred street-wise New 
York City rats twice its size in an evening.
 
In England the amazing rise of ferret-legging pales before the new
popularity of keeping ferrets as pets, a trend replete with numerous tragic
consequences. A baby was killed and eaten in 1978, and several children 
have been mauled by ferrets every year since then.
 
Loyal to nothing that lives, the ferret has only one characteristic that
might be deemed positive -- a tenacious, single-minded belief In finishing
whatever it starts. That usually entails biting off whatever it bites. 
The rules of ferret-legging do allow the leggers to try to knock the 
ferret off a spot it's biting (from outside the trousers only), but that 
is no small matter, as ferrets never let go.  No less a source than the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica suggests that you can get a ferret to let go by 
pressing a certain spot over its eye, but Reg Mellor and the other ferret 
specialists I talked to all say that is absurd. Reg favors a large 
screwdriver to get a ferret off his finger. Another ferret-legger told me 
that a ferret that had almost dislodged his left thumb let go only after 
the ferret and the man's thumb were held under scalding tap water--for 
ten minutes.
 
Mr. Graham Wellstead, the head of the British Ferret and Ferreting
Society, says that little is known of the diseases carried by the ferret 
because veterinarians are afraid to touch them.
 
Reg Mellor, a man who has been more intimate with ferrets than many men
have been with their wives, calls ferrets "cannibals, things that live 
only to kill, that'll eat your eyes out to get at your brain" at their 
worst, and "untrustworthy" at their very best.
 
Reg says he observed with wonder the growing popularity of ferret-legging
throughout the seventies. He had been hunting with ferrets in the verdant
moors and dales outside of Barnsley for much of a century. Since a cold 
and wet ferret exterminates with a little less enthusiasm than a dry one, 
Reg used to keep his ferrets in his pants for hours when he hunted in the 
rain -- and it always rained where he hunted.
 
"The world record was 60 seconds. Sixty seconds! I can stick a ferret up
me ass longer than that."
 
So at 69, Reg Mellor found his game. As he stood in front of me now, naked
from the waist down, Reg looked every bit a champion.
 
"So look close," he said again.
 
I did look, at an incredible tattoo of a zaftig woman on Rog's thigh. His
legs appeared crosshatched with scars. But I refused to "look close," saying
something about not being paid enough for that.
 
"Come on, Reg," I said. "Do they bite your -- you know?"
 
"Do they!" he thundered with irritation as he pulled up his pants.
 
"Why, I had 'em hangin' off me--"
 
Reg stopped short because a woman who was with me, a London television
reporter, had entered the cottage. I suddenly feared that I would never
know from what the raging ferrets dangle.  Reg offered my friend a chair with
the considerable gallantry of a man who had served in the Queen's army for
more than 20 years. Then he said to her, "Are ye cheeky, luv?"
 
My friend looked confused.
 
"Say yes," I hissed.
 
"Yes."
 
"Why," Reg roared again, "I had 'em hangin' from me tool for hours an'
hours an' hours! Two at a time -- one on each side. I been swelled up as 
big as that!" Reg pointed to a five-pound can of instant coffee.
 
I then made the mistake of asking Reg Mellor if his age allowed him the
impunity to be the most daring ferret-legger in the world.
 
"And what do ye mean by that?" he said.
 
"Well, I just thought since you probably aren't going to have any more
children...."
 
"Are you sayin' I ain't pokin' 'em no more?"  Reg growled with menace. "Is
that your meaning? Cause I am pokin' 'em for sure."
 
A small red hut sits in an overgrown yard outside Reg Mellor's door. "Come
outta there, ye bah-stards,"  Reg yelled as he flailed around the inside
of the hut looking for some ferrets that had just arrived a few hours 
earlier. He emerged with two dirty white animals, which he held quite 
firmly by their necks. They both had fearsome unblinking eyes as hard and 
red as rubies.
 
Reg thrust one of them at me, and I suddenly thought that he intended the
ferret to avenge my faux pas concerning his virility; so I began to run
for a fence behind which my television friend was already standing 
because she refused to watch. Reg finally got me to take one of the 
ferrets by its steel cable of a neck while he tied his pants at the ankle 
and prepared to "put em down."
 
A young man named Malcolm, with a punk haircut, came into the yard on a
motorbike. "You puttin' 'em down again, Reg?" Malcolm asked. Reg took the
ferret from my bloodless hand and stuck the beast's head deep into his
mouth.
 
"Oh yuk, Reg," said Malcolm.
 
Reg pulled the now quite embittered-looking ferret out of his mouth and
stuffed it and another ferret into his pants. He cinched his belt tight, 
clenched his fists at his sides, and gazed up into the gray Yorkshire 
firmament in what I guessed could only be a gesture of prayer. Claws and 
teeth now protruded all over Reg's hyperactive trousers.  The two bulges 
circled round and round one leg, getting higher and higher, and 
finally . . . they went up and over to the other leg.
 
"Thank God," I said.
 
"Yuk, Reg," said Malcolm.
 
"The claws," I managed, "Aren't they sharp, Reg?"
 
"Ay," said Reg laconically. "Ay."
 
Reg Mellor gives all the money he makes from ferret-legging to the local
children's home. As with all great champions, he has also tried to bring
more visibility to the sport that has made him famous. One Mellor  
innovation is the introduction of white trousers at major competitions 
("shows the blood better").
 
Mellor is a proud man. Last year he retired from professional
ferret-legging in disgust after attempting to break a magic six-hour mark 
-- the four-minute-mile of ferret-legging. After five hours of having 
them down, Mellor found that almost all of the 2,500 spectators had gone 
home. Then workmen came and began to dismantle the stage, despite his 
protestations that he was on his way to a new record. "I'm not packing it 
in because I am too old or because I can't take the bites anymore," Reg 
told reporters after the event, "I am just too disillusioned."
 
One of the ferrets in Reg's pants finally poked its nose into daylight
before any major damage was done, and Reg pulled the other ferret out. We all
went across the road to the local pub, where everyone but Reg had a drink to
calm the nerves. Reg doesn't drink. Bad for his health, he says.
 
Reg said he had been coaxed out of retirement recently and intends to
break six -- "maybe even eight" -- hours within the year.
 
Some very big Yorkshiremen stood around us in the pub. Some of them
claimed they had bitten the heads off sparrows, shrews, and even rats, 
but none of them would compete with Reg Mellor. One can only wonder what 
suffering might have been avoided if the Argentine junta had been 
informed that sportsmen in England put down their pants animals that are 
known only for their astonishingly powerful bites and their penchant for 
insinuating themselves into small dark holes. Perhaps the generals would 
have reconsidered their actions on the Falklands.
 
But Reg Mellor refuses to acknowledge that his talent is made of the stuff
of heroes, of a mixture of indomitable pride, courage, concentration, and
artless grace. "Naw noon o' that," said the king. "You just got be able 
ta have your tool bitten and not care."