He clasped her to his manly chest, like a ferret on heat
Journalist Paul Tolme recounts in Newsweek the unusual experience of discovering that an article he’d written about ferrets had been plagiarised – by a cheap, slightly erotic romance paperback.
Now, normally that would be a bad thing; plagiarism, after all, is a pernicious and dishonourable practice that needs to be stamped upon heartily. But the plagiarism, in this case, has given us some of the most giddily wonderful, utterly un-erotic dialogue ever squeezed between the warm, heaving covers of a soft-core potboiler.
The scene: a Native American called Shadow Bear has just boffed a young pioneer lady, Shiona Bramlett. Then, er, they see some ferrets:
“They are so small, surely weighing only about two pounds and measuring two feet from tip to tail,” Shiona said. “While alone in my father’s study one day, after seeing a family of ferrets from afar in the nearby woods, I took one of my father’s books from his library and read up on them. They were an interesting study. I discovered they are related to minks and otters. It is said that their closest relations are European ferrets and Siberian polecats. Researchers theorize that polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska, to establish the New World population.” …
“What I have observed of them, myself, is that these tiny animals breed in early spring when the males roam the night in search of females,” Shadow Bear said, watching as the last of the ferrets bounded off and disappeared amid the bushes away from where they had first been spotted. “Mothers typically give birth to three kits in early summer and raise their young alone in abandoned prairie dog burrows.” …
“I read that ferrets stalk and kill prairie dogs during the night. Using their keen sense of smell and whiskers to guide them through pitch-black burrows, ferrets suffocate the sleeping prey, an impressive feat considering the two species are about the same weight,” Shiona said, shivering at the thought, for to her one animal was as cute and precious as the next. It was a shame that any had to die to sustain the other.
It’s fantastic stuff. It’s Atlanta Nights meets Bulwer-Lytton meets David Attenborough. You should head over to Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books, who uncovered the plagiarism and who detail, in gleefully exhaustive fashion, every painful, jarring, sub-Dan Brown passage. Outstanding.
