My fiancee..( I love the sound of that) Is in the Military, (Army) He is in the medical field. He, as part of his training, quite recently I might add, has had to intubate ferrets. Now being a ferret owner himself was quite concerned at first, but each ferret was lovingly handled,a tech and a vet were right there, and NO MATTER WHAT, if the doctor or nurse or whomever was doing the intubation screwed up or could not get it right, the ferrets in their care were not ALLOWED to be intubated more than 3 times period..end of story, then they are..I guess adopted out, I will check into that. Now I don't know how other organizations practice this procedure, if anyone out there knows please let us know. 3 times is rather a low number, for some reason I though ferrets spent their lives at these places constantly going through this. I myself as an animal nurse can support this, I still don't like it but I cannot think of any other way around it. aside from finding out where they go after they are done with them, I suppose I should find out where they get them in the first place, I don't recall what Louis told me. Re: Shampoo, there are 3 that I use, that purple ferret shampoo, one from the vet that is oatmeal based and something that I picked up from Trader Joe's it is called pet shampoo, mostly natural stuff, citrus based..I even use it myself. I rarely bath my ferrets. Chandler loves the water, Joey, my tough beautiful boy, turns into a wussy and clings to my hand. Socks tolerates it she will sit on my arm/hand and patiently wait till the torture is over. Oliver loves to play in it, but an actual bath is just plain mean to him. I think half the reason I bath them is to watch the fun that ensues. June Louis and the zoo Missing my beautiful Phoebe [Posted in FML issue 2962]