Mag Magazine

On May 18th of 1972, about 40 miles outside of Chicago, The Village Crier published an obituary for a ferret. Her name was Felicia, and the paper even included a photograph, her little head and paws emerging from a tube. She’s largely forgotten today, but in 1971 she was a solution to a problem in the construction of the particle accelerator they were developing at Fermilab. The researchers were encountering many issues, one of which was metal shavings and other potential obstructions in the vacuum tubes blocking the particles they were trying to accelerate. A British researcher by the name of Robert Sheldon proposed the idea of sending a ferret through the nearly 4 miles of pipe, as it was cheaper and more readily available than constructing a robot. Enter Felicia, a very small 13 inch ferret ordered specifically for the task. With the prospect of a comfy cage and hamburger meat, she would run 300 foot sections of the tubes, some being only 3×4 inches in size, barely larger than her head. A line was tied to a harness made for her, and after she ran the tube someone would tie a swab to the other end and pull it through. She quickly became a mascot and favorite of the researchers, and when “she became bored” of her task and her robot replacement was completed, she retired to a simple life of a pet.

My goal with this piece was to give Felicia the celebrity status she deserves. Like how Alphonse Mucha made posters for Sarah Bernhardt in the late 1800s, I made a poster for her in a similar style. The orange circle is the track Felicia ran, the flowers are violets which are the state flower of Illinois, and the color palette was inspired by a recent photograph of a modern particle accelerator.

Prints available