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A dark cloud again descended upon our house in August when our precious little Orlando “SunKist” Matlick left our family.

Orlando Furioso “SunKist” Matlick

May 4, 2004 – August 28, 2012

It was nearly 8 years ago that a small ferret girl with a spectacularly soft, dark coat caught Chad’s eye at the breeders’ house. SunKist – her official registered name – was delicate, beautiful, the color of espresso and quite the little shit.

Orlando Furioso was EXTREMELY different than any of the previous ferrets who had shared our house. She wanted nothing to do with the two humans. What she did want to do was tag-team with her sister to try to torment our other lone, little old lady ferret, Dubbies as well as our very confused and shocked cats (although they probably deserved it) and us. There was no watching tv on the ferret room floor with these two awake.

For nearly 8 years Orlando and her sister ruled our house. With her beautiful mink like coat, Orlando inspired snuggling which she did not want. She had stuff to do, damn it, now put her down!

Orlando aka ‘Nanner aka Poot-Poot had a master’s degree in stealing socks and insoles, no matter what floor they were to be found. It was not unusual to hear an odd noise coming from the staircase and see her dragging a pair of knee socks up the hardwood steps.

We were quite worried when we lost Orlando’s sister Arcas a year ago. I thought for sure she would be depressed. But that little sneak surprised us and kept on going.

Happily our little weasel girl had a long, full life with very little downward spiral. The day before she left us I had a feeling the end was very near. The next morning Chad & I knew. The look in her eyes told us she was done fighting. So her daddy stayed home with her for the morning. Sometime between when he left for a meeting and when he came home three hours later she had gone.

We buried our little Orlando next to her sister. Godspeed little weasel, we’ll miss you.

Sometime in June we had this crazy storm blow through our fair state of West Virginia. They were calling it Derecho, but we called it Big Ball of Suck. Ok, maybe only I called it BBoS, but still, it was.

The annual sMAGPI Meat & Greet usually happens at Coonskin Park. But when the Big Ball of Suck blew through it did some serious damage and so the park was closed. Permanently. Or at least permanently this season.

Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a problem, but sMAGPI had already reserved our regular place up at Coonskin. And apparently they weren’t really forthcoming about saying, hey by the way, you gotta find some other place to have your shindig. Soooo, three weeks before the sMAGPI event we were scrambling to find a new location. And that’s how we found ourselves at Kanawha State Forest.

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It’s hard to have a surprise party for someone when they aren’t home on their birthday. And maybe he might have been suspicious. So instead, for his 40th I had his party 2 weeks later. I am so sneaky (yeah, not really).

Fortunately I had enough back up support from Bump, Dee & Rob and BJ to make sure it went smoothly.

B had the delightful chore of transporting the balloons in his Jeep.Which he did without any balloon casualties.

Bump was in charge of keeping me abreast of who all had arrived. He did a most excellent job. My phone was blowing up with messages. You’d have thought I was staging an invasion of of Morgantown. Also he brought cool Batman party favors.

And Dee & Rob were in charge of showing up and being the (non-Chad) guests of honor!

Judging by the look on his face when we got close enough to our table, I’d say mission accomplished.

Chad received many gifts of alcohol, including delicious fancy beer from Amy & Justin and some fine imported Canadian alcoholic beverages from Dee & Rob.

Happy Birthday! You’re old!

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