image via wiki (Roger McLassus)

The shock and awe of Shark Week is what draws us in and keeps us coming back all week. It’s also what gives us gnarly dreams and makes our next beach vacation a little more anxiety-filled (though shark attacks are very rare, especially here).

After a week full of self-induced-anxiety-filled television watching, I’m grateful for Ferret Week here at the Daily Jog. Full disclosure: none of us own ferrets, but some of us want to, and many of us have actually taken lunch breaks to local pet shops to watch the fur-slinky-creatures play… or snooze as is often the case. We like what we see in the ferret: a fuzzy, adorable, too-long-for-its-own-body, and seemingly spineless fur-baby.

According to its Wiki page, slinkies “can perform a number of tricks, including travelling down a flight of steps end-over-end as it stretches and re-forms itself with the aid of gravity and its own momentum.” After reading that, I wondered, did Richard James, inventor of the Slinky, have a pet ferret and model this toy so that everyone can enjoy the thrill of ferrets without the maintenance or caring for them?

If you haven’t watched enough YouTube videos about ferrets to see what we mean, check out this one. Keeping that definition of a metal spring toy in mind, then imagine your childhood toy covered in fur: Ferret.

Part of the magic of the ferret is when it goes up the stairs, too. It still looks like a slinky, but going up! See:

Happy Ferret Week!