Hi all,
 
Dax (fur-kid #2 and leather shoe fetishist extraordinaire) discovered a new
toy (or a new source of entertainment for me, anyway :-)) this morning.  I
put together a wooden wine-rack (4 slots wide by 3 slots high and made of
dowels) the other night and stood it up on its side on a cardboard box by a
wall to get it out of the way.  Dax had discovered Michelle's fancy leather
work shoes on the floor (one of her few remaining complete pairs) and was
making a valiant effort to run off with them as quickly as possible, so I
put them on top of the wine rack to get them out of his reach.  He went on
to explore other places.  Pretty soon he came back and found a way to get up
onto the box, and he stared up at the shoes for a minute.  Then he climbed
up through the wine rack like it was a jungle gym and tried to pull a shoe
back down through the rack.  The narrow spaces in the rack are not conducive
to the passing of shoes.  He worked at this for a while (long enough for me
to get the video camera and start recording him :-)), climbing through the
wine rack in different ways and tugging the shoe through different ways.
Finally he wised up, climbed down out of the wine rack, stood up along the
outside, and pulled the other shoe off the top in half a second and ran to
his favorite hiding spot with it.
 
I wonder if I can get him to do it again? :-)
 
Kirk (the next coach of the US ferret gymnastics team)
Michelle (who will some day remember to put away the shoes she can still
          find)
Connor (at 8 weeks old is annoyed by ticklish ferret whiskers as he gets
        fuzzy kisses)
Nikkei (enjoying his roly-poly winter pudge and contemplating a career in
        sumo wrestling)
Dax (I give myself a 10.0)
still snowless in Denver, Colorado
[Posted in FML issue 1718]