Sorry to post one more about this nose flicking issue, but since someone quoted a little piece of my post, I figured I would respond. I did not ask for a lesson in literal definitions. I did not look up "flicking" in the dictionary before deciding to use that word to describe an action that I did. Just as I'm sure Deziree didn't look up "thumping." If you had all read my whole post, you would have seen that I described my action as lightly tapping ... as if you were tapping the buttons on a telephone when dialing a number. That is extremely descriptive. I have NOT inflicted pain upon any of my animals. I made that quite clear in my post. It's a shame that people have to take words literally and run to their dictionaries in order to argue a point. Thanks to Bob C. for the anatomy lesson though. If my "phone-dialling" method is hard enough to break my ferret's nose, I guess I'll have to replace my telephone soon. Besides I'm sure my ferrets have run face-first into doors and such much harder than I have ever "flicked" them. Aileen [Posted in FML issue 3063]