But it is four pages long and I have time to only skim so i do not see
why Google Alerts flagged it for me.

It was a shock to find out that the federal gov't refused the loan of
a fire fighting plane from Russia because of the amount of fuel (high
operating cost) it would use and how much water it holds (a LOT); Steve
and I knew already that the federal administrators also refused to
allow in fire fighting planes from Canada due to a customs dispute
because that made the news. Shades of Katrina, right?

Anyway, when you find why Google sent it to me as a ferret story point
me to page and paragraph, please.

[I already pointed that out to Sukie. BIG]

---

Next topic:

Ferrets not only learn their own names when they hear them enough; they
learn the names of the others if the family isn't huge and they learn
favorite words. Four stories about words:

1. Back decades ago when we used to give them some fruitcake as a
treat Hjalmar hit a bit of it. I looked at him and said, "Hjalmar,
you stashed your fruit cake." Well, Fritter knew "Hjalmar", "fruitcake"
and "stash". She got up and checked every one of HIS favorite stash
places -- rather than her own or those of the others -- until she
found it and ate it.

2. Young Warp was asleep somewhere and we needed to get her. Steve
repeated to Meltdown, "Meltdown get Warp, then Meltdown get treat."
till he saw the lightbulb go off. Meltdown climbed under our platform
bed and emerged dragging a sleepy warp by the scruff, deposited Warp
on Steve's foot, looked Steve in the eye and licked her chops.

3. Sherman liked to "tattle". When we needed to put all f our wanderers
into the big night time cage we would say "Where's -------?" followed
by each ferret's name individually. He would lead us right to each one
by name. We did that almost every night.

4. Hjalmar liked to play "Hide and Seek" which was titled "Where's
Hjalmar?" He knew that from the discovery exclamation of "There's
Hjalmar!" What he DIDN'T know was that we could still see him if his
face was covered but another part hanging out. The part hanging out
was usually his big bum and the more we asked "Where's Hjalmar?' the
harder his tail would wag!

If a ferret has select words often repeated and simple sentences (or
simple conditional sentences used) the ferrets CAN learn the meanings.
My own suspicion is that this is because they are descended from burrow
dwellers who also hunted at night and in dark burrows so having a grasp
of the noises of the prey species as well as of themselves would be
optimally useful.

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html

[Posted in FML 5775]