The nation's capital had plenty of attention-grabbers last week _ a juicy Pentagon scandal, Ronald Reagan's last summit, a new $16 million House of Representatives phone system that went deaf _ but here's what Washington was really talking about: A fugitive ferret named Fuji, its combative owner, and a 5-year-old boy. Not even Carl Rowan's uninvited, underwear swimmer _ the 18-year-old suburban lad shot after taking an unauthorized dip in the columnist's pool _ could match the continuing drama. The ferret's owner, 19-year-old Jennifer Au, was on a weekend furlough from jail where she spent the week charged with contempt of court for not telling where Fuji is. The boy, Auston Jacob Simpson, was nearing the end of a painful series of six rabies shots. The story began June 3 when Auston's grandmother took him to the Docktor Pet Center in Manassas, Va., a Washington suburb. He stopped by a cage containing Fuji and two other ferrets. One bit him. Authorities then sought to kill each of the ferrets and test their innards for rabies. Two of the ferrets were sacrificed _ their heads cut off and their brains examined by health officials, who found the animals to have been healthy. But Fuji was spirited away by Miss Au, who worked in the pet shop. In court, charged with concealing the animal, she said she left the ferret at an abandoned house after making a deal over the telephone with someone she didn't know to have it picked up. The anonymous phone contact apparently was made after the biting incident became known to a group of ferret lovers. Miss Au told Circuit Judge Percy Thornton that said she saw the boy being bitten and that Fuji didn't do it. Moreover, she said, the ferret had been isolated in a cage for more than a month, and its continued good health proved it didn't have rabies. She said she had tried to comply with the judge's order to produce the animal by contacting ferret groups, but the judge was unsympathetic. ``You're putting this child at risk,'' Thornton said and found her in contempt. When she shouted at him, the judge ordered her jailed for three hours. ``I think your priorities are mixed up,'' said Thornton. A weekend went by and the ferret still had not been produced. Thornton ordered Miss Au to jail. ``If it were in this court's power,'' said the judge, ``I would put you through the same thing this child is going through.'' On Thursday, with the ferret still missing, Miss Au appeared before the judge for a bond hearing and was turned down. On Friday, Thornton issued the weekend leave and ordered the young woman back behind bars on Monday. Meanwhile, a second person _ a 24-year-old man who was not publicly identified _ was scheduled to begin the rabies shots after he said he was bitten by a ferret in the same store. The ferret battle was fought not only in court, but in the pages of the Washington Post. An editorial sided with the judge and his hard line. ``It is truly contemptible that this woman and her confederates have chosen to put a child through this torture rather than obey a court order and the dictates of common decency,'' said the Post. But in the same issue, writer Henry Mitchell allied himself with the ferret. ``There has to be some reasonable basis for thinking this particular ferret, despite testimony to the contrary, bit the boy, and from everything you could read of the case there was no reason to doubt the woman when she swore it was not her ferret,'' he wrote. The ferret story was not the clear winner in the talk-of-the-town competition. The Rowan-intruder story resurfaced when authorities decided to charge the uninvited swimmer and the young woman arrested with him in Rowan's back yard, but not to charge the columnist for shooting the young man. The on-again, off-again phone system in the House was a one-day sensation, causing impassioned denunciations from congressmen who found their link to constituents interrupted. And the Pentagon procurement scandal continued to bubble. The week's most telling quote came from Miss Au, when she was jailed on Monday: ``This is extremely stupid and ridiculous, needless,'' she said. ``This has gone too far.''
