Before beginning the drive, Rudy Giuliani put Judith Nathan, a woman he had met earlier that year, in a “special friend” carrier and attached it to the side of the family car. He'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for Ms. Nathan.

Then Giuliani put his family, wife Donna Hanover and children Andrew and Caroline, on notice: He would be making stops to arrest squeegie men and jaywalkers, and that was it.

The ride was largely what you'd expect, until Ms. Nathan was suddenly attacked by a pair of ferrets.

As the rest of the family joined in the howls of horror, Giuliani coolly pulled off the highway and into a Firearms R Us. There, he purchased a gun, shot each of the ferrets 41 times, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for: decisive crisis management.

“Those ferrets were no altar boys,” he remarked.

Political analyst and freelance masculinity consultant Howard Fineman reflected on the episode years later. "I always knew Rudy looked like a guy who, if he had had the opportunity to grow up as a ferret hunter, would have been a great one. He just gives off the aura of a guy who wouldn’t be afraid to use a gun on a pair of ferrets, you know? That‘s just—and that‘s the record that he established on that one car trip.”

Is it just me, or is there a weird narrative developing lately about Republican presidential candidates and their relation to animals? One wonders how Tom Tancredo feels about mice.