Sports in Hell

Sports in Hell Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Sports in Hell Read Online Free PDF
Author: Rick Reilly
(biting own lip hard
)
: Bloody good
.
    Warden: Are you aware there are quite a lot of odd movements
in your crotch region?
    Nigel (holding back tears
)
: No! Truly?
    Warden: Truly
.
    Nigel (shaking visibly
)
: Well, I have a confession to make
.
    Warden: Oh?
    Nigel: (weeping) You stir something in me, Charles
.
    Anyway, it turned out a warm ferret is a better hunter than a cold ferret and the pants-dropping practice caught on. This started an argument in the tavern one night among the lads. Who among them could stand having their ferret down their pants the longest? This probably begot a bar bet, which started a sport, which, 200 years later, somehow, involved me.
    The rules of ferret legging are simple yet cruel: No wearing underwear. No declawing or defanging the ferret. Pants must be wool and clamped at the ankle. Belt cinched tight at the waist. No feeding the ferret beforehand. No drugging the ferret. No drugging oneself. Knocking the ferret off a particular part of your person is allowed, but only from outside your pants. Of course, this is like saying, “Lifting the steamroller off your foot is allowed,” because there is almost no getting a ferret off a particular part of your person once it has its heart set on it. Some people use screwdrivers. I’ve heard of people doing it with scalding hot water. Also heard it doesn’t work. The winner is determined in the same manneras an oyster-eating contest. The man who can keep them down the longest is the champion.
    The all-time record for withstanding the pain of ferrets down the trousers is, believe it or not, five hours and twenty-six minutes by a furry little man in Yorkshire, England, named Reg Mellor. One time,
Outside
magazine asked Mellor if the ferrets ever bit his crank.
    â€œDo they!” Mellor answered. “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!” And he pointed to a large can of instant coffee.
    Not a comforting passage for the greenhorn ferret legger to read.
    Ferret legging has fallen in glory since its heyday in the ’70s. People decided it was cruel. Not to the ferrets, to the people. Great Britain banned it, which hurt a lot. Hell, you can’t even own a ferret as a
pet
in California or Hawaii. Far as we could tell, only two places in North America still participated in legging: Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Richmond, Virginia.
    But Manitoba apparently took too much heat from animal rights activists (if they only knew) and axed it in favor of “ferret racing,” which involves ferrets running through a series of plastic pipes and tubes. Yuck. Now, if they released a rabbit two feet ahead of the ferret, perhaps coated in bacon grease, you’d have something.
    That left Richmond, which was featuring ferret legging at its annual Richmond Highland Games & Celtic Festival, an event with the motto: “Music, Food and Large Men Throwing Stuff.” The ad promised that these large men would heave giant rocks and flip telephone poles end over end. Plus, they’d be wearing kilts while doing it. Are those good things to combine? Kilt-wearing men and knife-toothed ferrets? Isn’t that sort of like having R. Kelly at the Girl Scout Jamboree?
    To get a little background on the coming event, TLC began e-mailing a woman from the Richmond Ferret Rescue League named Paige Collier, who informed her that I would “almost certainly” be fine, that yes, I would be putting them down my pants without underwear, but that everyone is only allowed to go three minutes and can quit anytime they want during those three.
    That’s it? Three minutes? Five hours and twenty-three minutes shy of the world record? I was almost, dare I say, disappointed. Then Paige Collier wrote, “Would you like to see bios of the competing ferrets?”
    This came as a shock to the both of us. Ferrets have bios? Who
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