Danielle, your story of Dopey going out with the trash reminds me of
something that happened to me several years ago, which I also can laugh
about now because it turned out OK.  My boyfriend at the time lived in a
loft in New York City, where I often spent the weekends, along with my dog
and two ferrets.  They had free roam of the loft until bedtime.  We had
a pizza delivered for dinner that night, and sometime well after we had
finished the pizza and were vegging out in front of the TV, we had a knock
on the door from the police, asking if we'd seen a raccoon in the building!
It seems a maintenance man had called the police to come and save him from
a raccoon he'd spotted in the hallway, and this terrified guy was holed up
in an office until the police arrived to rescue him.  It took me about 1.5
seconds to deduce what had happened, and I immediately went in search of
Clover, my little 1 pound ferret girl with the raccoon face!  I found her
at the far end of the hallway, around the corner where the trash is stored,
fast asleep inside a full bag of trash.  I brought her out and showed her
to the officers, who thought she was cute and laughed the whole thing off
(this was before ferrets were illegal in NYC).  The only one who didn't
think it was so funny was the maintenance guy, who had to explain to his
boss why he had suddenly disappeared.  He actually put me on the phone with
the boss, who proceeded to chew me out for keeping his employee from doing
his job!  I can't even remember what my response was, I was just so
relieved to find Clover safe and sound!  The trash would have been put out
in the wee hours of the morning, and I shudder to think what might have
happened... Although I would have gone looking for her at bedtime anyway.
I have always made sure all my guys (now six of them) are safely asleep in
their hammies before I go to bed.
 
Clover was less than a year old then; she is now over six and is still an
adventurous spirit.  She was my first ferret (the first one I'd ever seen,
in fact -- but that's another story!), and at the time I was still pretty
ignorant about what kinds of trouble these little gremlins could get into!
 
On another subject, for Ron Knipple: I have one of those sonic pest
deterents in my garage to keep the mice away (it works).  My ferrets don't
go out there, except for an occassional ride on my shoulder, but I can tell
you that it does not bother my cat at all.  He spends a lot of time in the
garage -- wondering where the mice went, I guess.
 
Nancy and critters
[Posted in FML issue 3382]