Let me start this off by saying, Jack has already lost his extra winter weight, so he is looking a little skinny to begin with... I get up early this morning to do some laundry and such. I don't let the group out until I know I won't be running up and down from the basement. Well, as I walk through the rec room to the basement door, heads pop up out of the hammock - you can hear the 'hey here is mom, playtime, yahoo', and then as I go by, the 'wait a minute she walked past us, what in the name of dirty socks and bags of raisins is going on'. This happened a few times, and I could almost hear the conspiring. So, I was feeling guilty about not letting them out at their normal time, so I went over to hand out raisins. They were all piled into one hammock (5 ferrets, the old man sleeps alone). At the bottom of the pile was Jack, with his head hanging over the side where it came to rest after everyone climbed over him to get out. He did not look like he was breathing and because he had lost his winter weight, his side looked almost caved in (like a dead animal). My heart dropped into my stomach, I opened the door, reached out to him, could not feel his chest moving, picked him up, completely limp. I laid him back in the hammock, let everyone else out and went to get a towel to wrap him up in. With tears in my eyes, I came back, picked him up again and he almost jumped out of my hands as if to say, gotcha.... He raced off with the other ferrets and then everyone stopped to look at me and I swear they were laughing..... So this is why I hate my ferrets....... okay not really, but boy did I want to tie Jack's whiskers into knots!!!!! Hugs to everyone and their rotten conspiring little furballs! Jen and Gang [Posted in FML issue 3024]