After 17 years of ferret ownership I almost lost one of my ferrets this weekend due to my own stupidity. Nobody likes to admit to making mistakes, least of all me, but if someone can learn from this experience then it will be worth telling. My ferrets are free roam in their room (a bedroom converted to ferret playroom). There are two large (home made) cages in the room which are always open. Saturday morning I woke at about 8:00am and headed for the ferret room to let them out to play. The minute I hit the hallway I could hear a strange noise coming from the room. It took me precious seconds to track down the source of the noise. Julie my 5 year old personality-plus blaze female had become wedged between the back of the cage and the wall. She had climbed up the side of the cage and when she tried to shimmy down the back she became stuck. The noise I heard was her frantic gasping for air! I have no idea how long she'd been there. I immediately pulled the cage away from the wall and she dropped to the floor and just lay there. My heart began pounding and the panic set in. When I picked her up her little body it was cold. I quickly wrapped her in a blanket and flew out the door straight to the emergency vets (speeding and running red lights all the way). Julie was in shock and was suffering from hypothermia. They would need to stabilize her before checking for further damage. She was placed into an incubator with oxygen and a warming blanket. To make a long story short Julie recovered and was able to come home late that afternoon. For the next two days she remained quite and slept a lot but as of this morning she is back to her usual bratty self. How did this happen....it happened because I was racing around cleaning cages the day before leaving for vacation, and stupidly forgot to pull the cage back out from the wall, where I had pushed it so I could clean the bits of food up around the front of it. To make matters worse I did this almost a month ago and then completely forgot about it afterwards and never even noticed later the potential danger that existed. I came so close to loosing her this weekend....even when I know better than to have heavy items too close to the wall. Please take the time right now, today, to check and double check how close your furniture is from a wall. It may save a life! Barbara Gustafson Alberta Ferret Society President [Posted in FML issue 3755]