Ferret-Legging vs Crisco Twister

Oh, sure, I get my leggings in a twist all the time! It sort of pull into one's ar$e a bit, but hey, sometimes one just doesn't have the time to mind that bum-floss sensation.

Especially if you wear a thong anyway.

You do???? Isn't it uncomfortable??

Lord no, I wouldn't wear one of those things! I have way to much respect for myself and my comfort level.

ha-ha! I think it must be horribly uncomfortable. Just picture how one's knickers sometimes do that thing where they sort of get stuck in one's butt crack. Imagine what it must feel having that ALL the time, and with a piece of scraping, itching, irritating string! And it looks so totally silly! Like the person hasn't quite figured out how to use a slingshot.

It's such a cliche, but do you suppose a man invented them?

Men invented everything. That's why we're in control.

Man invented it, but it was women that made it a fad.

[This is supposedly from the November 1992 Harper's.] Mr. Reg Mellor, the "king of the ferret-leggers," 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 seventy-two-year-old champion, "no jockstraps allowed. No underpants -- nothin` whatsoever. And it's nogood with tight trousers, mind ye. Little bah-stards have to be able to move around inside there from ankle to ankle." Basically, ferret-legging involves the tying of a competitor's trousers at the ankles and the insertion into those trousers of a couple of peculiarly vicious fur-coated, foot-long 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 damnedest to get out. From a dark and obscure past, the sport has made an astonishing comeback in recent years. When I first heard about ferret-legging, in 1972, the world record stood at forty painful seconds of "keepin' 'em down," as they say in ferret-legging circles. A few years later the dreaded one-minute mark was finally surpassed. The current record -- implausible as it may seem -- now stands at an awesome five hours and twenty-six minutes, a mark reached last year by the gaudily tattooed little Yorkshireman with the waxed military mustache who now stood two feet away from me explaining the technicalities of this burgeoning sport. "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. So then, lad. Any more questions 'fore 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 workingman'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 by a ferret. Ferreters -- those who hunt with ferrets, as opposed to putting them in their pants -- tell tales of rabbits running toward hunters to surrender after gazing into the torch-red eyes of an oncoming ferret. 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 Encyclopedia Britannica suggests that you can get a ferret to let go by pressing a certain spot over its eye, but Mellor and the other ferret specialists I talked to 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. 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 '70s. 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 sixty seconds. Sixty seconds! I can stick a ferret up me ass for longer than that." So, at age sixty-nine, 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 Reg's thigh. His legs appeared crosshatched with scars. But I refused to "look close." "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've had 'em hangin' from me tool for hours an' hours an' hours! Two at a time -- one on each side. I been swelled up 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 thought since you probably aren't going to have any morechildren -- " "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. A young man named Malcolm, with a punk haircut, came into the yard on a motorcycle. "You puttin' 'em down again, Reg?" Malcolm asked. Reg took one of the ferrets and stuck the beasts 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 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 fter 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."

After reading a story like that, one must wonder what the local water is contaminated with.

That was stunning! ha-ha!!

It's more than just stunning. It's probably a hallucinogen that makes Lysergic Acid seem mild by comparison.

Stop! My tummy is starting to hurt! So do you wear those funny thong underpants, Tim?

The closest thing to a thong, that I know of, which is worn by men, is a jockstrap, and yes, occasionally I wear one.

And what's it like? Does it tickle?

It does tickle at times, and at times it itches. Sometimes a practical joker will put BENGUE on it and then it burns like crazy.

AAAAAHHH! Tell me honestly: is it worth it?

(Personally I've always thought of underpants as a means to an end, nothing more, nothing less...)

I wonder what the reason for underpants is. I wear them primarily to keep from getting caught in the zipper.

Same here, babe!

Well then, the only way to eliminate underpants is to eliminate the zipper. LEVIs 501s, Here I come. Actually I already have several pairs of 501s. They aren't in fashion now, so they are only 60% of the price of other LEVIs. I like the buttons better anyway.

And now that they eliminated the crotch rivet, they're practical to wear without underwear. Man! that crotch rivet sure taught me to keep my distance from a campfire!!!

ha-ha! As long as it didn't frighten you into permanent retreat!

No, but it did serve as a constant reminder. Man!! that sucker got hot quick.

Be careful when putting them on directly from the dryer as well!

Yeah? What happens? Quick shave?

Same thing as with the campfire, only Immediately. But, noy anymore. No more crotch rivet.

�crawling with laughter� You must show me some time! But we'll have to be close to a hospital - I'm not in a position to kiss it better if necessary! ha-ha!!

I think I'll pass on the actual experience. HOwever, Riette, for you , I'll Mime it. What position do you have to be in, Riette? By the way, Austin has so many hospitals, that you are only five min. from the hospital anywhere in town. If you don't need the ambulance, that is. Call EMS, it'll take an hour.

ha-ha!! Any position you need in order to mime it - you'll have to teach me! And what will I do with you for a whole hour, if I have to call EMS??

Ok Riette, I'll teach you a position or two. Or three or four. I can come up with all kinds of interesting things to do for an hour!!

Yes, you know - talking about the weather in every kind of position while giving you mouth to mouth resuscitation; for the sheer purpose of keeping you alive, of course. I'm a good nurse, you'll see.

Of course, Riette! You know, we'll just have to schedule a few practice sessions, just to make sure we got down good... The timing I mean. We Will have to do this as soon as we can after you get here, Just so we're ready for sure.

Yes, it is always good to be fully prepared for these things. The lungs - you know, the lungs have to be good too. They need to be exercised too. I read somewhere that sucking hard on things (like lollies or whatever) helps with that. And don't forget the target practise that is required for emergency treatment. Lots of training and practise required.

Yes, Riette!! Definitely! We'll have to start practicing at the first opportunity!

At every opportunity!

OH BOY, Riette!!! I like the way you think!

I bet you do!

Yes, Riette, I Do, Very Much.

Perverse minds sin alike....

Together, Riette, together.

ha-ha! DAMN, you're good! If we were a couple, we'd probably be more perverse than Dick van Dyke in a pickel advert!

Ha HA HAAA HA! Riette, that tops any of the ones I have been able to come up with!

Oh, that's not so difficult. I mean, if you have a dick AND a dyke in your name, you're just ASKING for it, aren't you?!

Riette!!! Translate the "van" in his name!

The Dyke's Dick? HAAAAAAA-HAAAAAA!!!! STOP IT! My neighbours must think I'm totally nuts!

I knew that you would get a kick out of that Riette!!!

Indeed I got a dick out of it!

Riette, I just can't type the response that comes to mind.

Now you've got me all curious! Really not? Mail it!

Riette, It'll be in the next one i send.

Allright, you two. Go get a room...

Riette, do you know what kind of room he's got in mind?