I've been a bit under the weather because of incompatibility between my body and a new medication I am taking. I think "beta blocker" stands for brain blocker. I am sleeping 24/7. Well, when I am not caring for Fraggle. But I AM asleep now.... Fraggle is doing wonderful! She is eating Bob's Chicken Gravy like a greedy little pig and her once slightly pinched belly is now bulging like an internet geek after a six pack of Jolt and two dozen twinkies. She and Sam Luc are cutting up in the hospital cage, and while her contribution is mostly watching, she still managed to help pull everything from the top of the cage into the litter box at the bottom of the cage (aka: the poop deck). Q: "DO YOU REALLY PUT A FERRET IN WITH ONE THAT JUST HAD SURGERY???!!!" A: Yep, just after I flay their skin off their bodies with a butter knife and dip them in lemon juice. You aren't the kind of person who puts a bike helmet on your kid when they set in a rocking chair, are you? Let's put it this way. Back in the Late Paleolithic, my first job was as a hospital orderly. I was hired the summer I turned 16 (back then, you had to be 16 just to visit someone in the hospital). By the time I was a senior, I was working full time in the ICU/CCU. When I turned 18, I was invited to participate in my dear uncle's war games, but because I was upset that I would no longer be attending med school like I planned, I thought a sailor's life was the life for me. Since the religious preference question was answered "Friends," I was sent to corps school, then OR school, then field med school. After a bit of on the job training, under fire so to speak, I eventually ended up at Balboa, in sunny San Diego, where I excelled in passing out stuff during neuro, cardiac, ortho and finally plastic surgery. After an emotional retirement, I took my free licenses and worked on ambulances, in emergency rooms, and as a Code Blue tech until I earned my degree in photojournalism. Well, until I got my first job in photojournalism. During my photo daze, I helped out a bit on a couple of volunteer fire departments, where I learned to drink a lot of beer among other things. The other things was helping out in wildlife rescue and cat shelters. When I discovered journalism was yellower than a heavy smoker's back teeth, I returned to school for degrees in Zool and one in Archy, did my work on mink, worked in a mustelid shelter, and volunteered at a local vet hospital that ran a wildlife rehab. During that time, I TAUGHT the lab section for Human Anatomy AND Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy for 4 semesters. I have aced EVERY anatomy and physiology class required for vet school graduation with a few extra tossed in. I am quite literally an expert at identifying bone fragments, and have analyzed many bones for several law enforcement agencies, where I've even courted problems. I've owned ferrets since the mid 1980s, more than a dozen (once up to 25 plus 4 temps) for the last 5 years, and have survived a dozen ferret deaths. And that don't even begin to count the pets I've owned. Now, with all that medical, surgical, emergency, anatomical and rehab experience, don't you think I could recognize a danger if placing Fraggle in the same cage with her bonded buddy actually caused one? Get real. Worry about your own ferrets and stop shouting. Q: "I heard you don't cage your ferrets....is that true?" A: Well, ferts have masks, masks are worn by criminals, who become cons, who fly on Con Air, saved by a Cage, who never saved my ferts. Yep, 'tis true. I only cage them once a week for a few hours while I field day the carpeted areas, or when they are sick. Freedom is a precious thing. Q: "Does ANYONE know where ferrets were domesticated?" A: Oh sure, but since they have been dead for a couple of thousand years, they aren't saying. NO one knows. Fact of life. If anyone tells you any place, at any time, they are either misinformed or lying. Unless they say it was Egypt, in which case they are the picture example in the dictionary, right next to the word "Wrong." Bob C and 16 Mo' Surgical Cut Ups [Posted in FML issue 3049]