Murphy's Oil Soap: One of Mortimer's favoritist treats.  He'll wake from a
dead sleep to eat the stuff if I am cleaning with it.  Of course, I don't
LET him eat it, but he will literally dive into the bucket and slurp for all
he's worth.  The only thing that could make Murphy's oil soap more
attractive would be a YELLOW sponge filled with it which he could drag off
and lick lick lick.  I don't think Murphy's is directly toxic.  Of course
it's not a good idea to let your ferts eat it.  It should be fine if you
clean their play areas with it.  Whenever my ferrets make a snack out of
soaps (ordinary soap containing no ammonia or other chemicals) they never
seem to get sick from it, so don't panic.  :)
 
The other day I was using formula 409 to clean and before I could stop him,
Mortime TASTED it!  Yeck!  He didn't like it, but he gave me a heart attack.
*sigh*
 
On domesticated animals-I mentioned this discussion to my husband and he had
one modification to make to Mo'Bob's list.  Dogs were not domesticated IN
the new world.  They were brought to the new world ALREADY that way.  As in,
over the land bridge ten thousand years ago.  So, yes, there were domestic
dogs before contact (mmm, tasty), but it they were still an old world
invention.
 
Also, in a discussion with him (I love living with an archeologist) on
precontact New World societies, he said that it was actually somewhat of a
mystery to science why WHEELS were not used on carts, etc.  The leading
theory: they had no domestic animals large enough to pull a cart, therefore,
wheels had no practical applications.  Think about it.  Neat, huh?  (No,
llamas aren't quite strong enough for that purpose, but they can carry
packs.)
 
-Catherine
[Posted in FML issue 1849]