What they steal...well...this could be a long one. Mira has a hacky-sack stuffy. She adopted it the day after my birthday two years ago, for which it was a gift. It is sand-filled, so I don't worry about blockages too much. She hides this like a typical stuffy. She also loves the cheap thin little dart cases that come with a set of darts. These are about two inches wide and five-six inches long, fake leather. They are only thick enough to accomodate the barrel of a dart. The flights must be removed and put in the special flights pocket. Mira has as many of those as I have gone through new dart sets. About five. Cael steals me. Almost every time I pick him up, he finds a nice spot on a finger or my hand, and clamps on. Gently, but hard enough that if I tried to get away, it would hurt. Then he asks to be let down, and as soon as his little feet hit the floor, under the bed he goes, me in tow. Then he sets my hand down, and licks it for a while, and after he wanders off, I remove myself. Tasha is a weirdo. Her favorite thing to steal is empty cigarette packs. At the last place I rented, the "run" included among other things, one of my roommates's bedroom. (They were allowed in that room because they couldn't be kept out.) This roommate smoked quite a bit. He tended to twist up empty packs so he knew they were empty, and then he would toss them in a wastebasket. One afternoon, the ferrets were out while he was napping, and he woke up to Tasha burrowing around in a wastebasket that contained exclusively twisted-up empty packs. He thought nothing of it, there was nothing in there to hurt her. When we moved out of that house, we found three different stashes of these packs, in various places around the "run." Approx. 40 empty packs. It gets better. In the much smaller place I live now, the ferrets have only my bedroom. They only get let out when I can devote full attention to them and where they are going, because the other rooms can't be ferret-proofed. But... Tasha escaped from the bedroom about a week ago, during the night when I was asleep. I had gone to bed late, and she must have slipped past me then. When I woke up two hours later, she was sitting outside the bathroom door looking at me when I got done. "Tashee, you rotten ferret, what are you doing out here?" I put her back in her room and investigated. Nothing looked amiss. I slept more. When I actually got up, I wandered into the kitchen for coffee, noticed a cigarette on the floor, and picked it up and smoked it. I thought nothing of how and why a cigarette was on the floor in the kitchen, until an hour later. when I wanted another and couldn't find them. Upon further investigation, I found the only things disturbed during Tasha's freedom... All the empty cigarette packs from the waste basket in the living room were gone. Hidden under the couch, under the coffee table, and a small stash in the bathroom behind the toilet. The full pack from on top of the computer desk? Gone. I found it half an hour later in the kitchen, under the sink. All the cigarettes were dry and intact. Lucky for Tasha. No WONDER that smoke was on the floor...right in front of the sink... Silly me. BTW, at no time do I smoke when there isn't at least one closed door between me and the ferrets. Nor is anyone else allowed to, or ever has been. As yet, Robin doesn't steal anything strange... just socks, underwear, and any other clothes that are on the floor. (How I get dressed every morning, I'll never know.) He tries to steal Tasha, but she will have none of THAT! Melissa Mira: Mom? Where's my hacky? Did Cael steal it again? Cael: I didn't take it, look under the nightstand where you put it. Tasha: MOOOMM!!! Robin is biting my ear again!! Robin: I was not! I was just trying to drag you under the...whoops... [Posted in FML issue 3294]