Tight Squeeze...

My fiancée and I have a wonderful pet ferret with more personality than most dogs. He is the only animal I have ever bonded with, and my fiancée was inconsolable when after two and a half days, she realized that he was lost for good. We live in a New York style apartment with three exterior windows that look out to the brick wall of the building directly next to us. The neighboring building is no more than two feet away. On the front of the street and at the back of the building, the entrance to the narrow alley is completely blocked off. We live on the second floor and there are no windows on the first story; the distance to the ground is about twenty-two feet. We keep our ferret in the laundry room where we vent our dryer through a broken pane in the window. After tearing our whole house apart we realized that there was nowhere he could have gone except out the window. The window is five feet off the floor. Somehow he had climbed up the dryer hose and fell 20+ feet to the bottom of the alley. He had no way to escape. I had no choice but to try and climb down the walls between the two buildings to the bottom and bring him back up. This was no easy task. My fiancée was hysterical and begging me not to risk my life, but we had no other options. I managed to find a tow strap (not even a proper rope) long enough to reach to the bottom, and I tied it to the steel center of the bricked in window. I began to climb. Reaching the bottom of the alley was not exceptionally difficult. I lowered myself gradually to the ground, where I rescued my quivering little friend, and sent him back to his mommy in the safety of a 5-gallon bucket. I still had to get back up the wall to the window 27 feet above my head, and with no room to bend my legs for assistance with the climb. I could only use my arms to pull myself up the wall. Needless to say I survived with only minor bruises and scrapes, my ferret is OK, and my fiancée thinks I'm a hero. It's amazing the things you can do if you love your pet enough!

Robert S.
Ocala, FL