The black footed ferret stories remind me of when I moved from Montreal to Boston with my fuzzies... I lived up in Montreal for a few years, and so used a particular border crossing in Vermont often enough to recognize the year-round border guards who worked there. One of them was a real prune, very rude to everyone and seemed to enjoy terrorizing people-- everybody was guilty until proven innocent in his book. So as we approached the border, I was hoping that we wouldn't run into him. Our luck seemed good; they didn't ask to search my U-Haul (not that there was anything to find in it, but it would have taken hours), and although they'd never dealt with ferrets before, the guards on duty were very rational about it and called the nearest USDA vet for advice (fortunately that vet was up on his regulations). So, I picked up the ferrets' carrier from the counter, and was just turning to leave when-- yep, it was the old grouch! He yelled at me to wait, and came over. "What kind of ferrets are those?" he barked at me. "um," said I, "they're just ferrets, domestic ferrets, there's not really different kinds..." "No," he growled at me, "_some_ ferrets are endangered!" I think I gaped at him openmouthed for several seconds before collecting myself enough to reply "oh, you mean black-footed ferrets, no, these are regular pet ferrets." He was ok with that and let us go-- I really think he just wanted to scare me! Granted back in those days Cully had pretty much the same coloring as a BFF, but I can't imagine just cavalierly traveling around with wild mustelids in a cat carrier! A mile down the road I finally started breathing again, and then I stopped breathing because i was laughing so hard :-) Regina Harrison [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] Gossamer into Spiderweb: new, moved, and mightily improved: http://www.channel1.com/users/regina/~gossamer.html nothing but future ruins the material for the next layer [Posted in FML issue 3531]