Hi to all. Boy, I am new to the list, but it never ceases to amaze me the love that all of the fml'ers have for their fuzzies. I at one time, never would have thought to get a ferret - but at Christmas time last year, we had a small tragedy. We had a house fire, and had to temporarily move from our house. At that time, we had the following animals: two cats, and one rat (yes, I said rat) - we were forced to find temporary housing for them for a few days until we could move into our home again. We had a wonderful neighbor who has a son, who had rats that just recently died, who said she would watch our rat for us. I should have enquired as to why their rats died - but I didn't. We found out (too late) - that she had a small carbon minoxide leak, and that while our rat died, it may have spared her family from a worse fate. My youngest son, however, would not look at that as a consolation - so I decided to try and "replace" his rat, with another one from Petco. Well, I went to our local Petco, with the full intention of purchasing a rat replacement. On my way back to the cages, I bumped into a display and my keys fell out of my pocket. As I bent over to retrieve them, someone grabbed my hair and gave it a yank. I looked up into the brown little pudding eyes of our first ferret. As I sat there puzzling, how to get her furry fingers untangled from my long hair, it dawned on me......I had to get this ferret....what choice did I have? She had me by the hair!!! Enter: Helena - a very small petite, but energy filled cinammon female.... In hopes of keeping this long story short, we brought her home. Decided that she looked waaaaay too lonely, and set out - back to Petco for another friend for her (this was before I knew there were ferret shelters folks...). I went in and looked around for the "best" suit for her - and discovered a very small sable boy - who was really on the border of being too young to sell, and was the tiniest one in the lot (there were only 3) but he looked so "frail" that we had to get him......enter Romulus....my 7 month old 3.5 POUND (yeah, small and frail my butt!) young man. They are now the best of buddies and own us thoroughly. Recently, we had a long trip from New Mexico to Michigan that we were driving. Enter problem one: who will care for these guys like we do? They have free reign of the house (except at nightime) - and were NOT going to be very tolerant of being "caged" for 8 days, with no relief. Enter solution: Bring em with us! So off we went, two ferts, 3 children and two thoroughly insane adults. We WERE smart enough to realize that this large crew would require TWO cars, and not one. I don't know if anyone else has ever traveled across the country with ferts before, but one thing I can tell you is our two did FAMOUSLY!!! We made numerous stops for "potty" and "walk the ferts" purposes. At every rest area we stopped at, Helena and Romulous were a hit. Talk about an attention getter.......people were dumping their dogs in their cars, so they could run to "meet" these furry little creatures. I personally, must have "trained" at least 25 people on the fun of ferts! We had a wonderful time doing this, and would not hesitate to do it again. We were welcome at hotels with them, without too much flack (we fibbed and said they NEVER leave their cages - yeah right!!!) Thankfully, they did no permanent damage to any of the rooms we were in! Taking them with us was a real chore, but it was made worth it, by knowing that WE were caring for them, and that the trip was not stressing them. So - to any of you other brave, adventerous (Uh, daring? *grins*) people, if you must travel with ferts, it is not as traumatic as one might think! I would NOT however, recommend this for folks with elderly ferts. I think ours did so great, because they are both still so young (8 and 9 months old), and because we made many frequent (to my childrens dismay) stops, which I think helped too. Just wanted to share our story with other fuzzie lovers out there Dooks to all! Kim and her "not so tiny" fuzz butts. Kimberly Gorman Regional Translations Engineer Cricket Communications A Leap Company Albuquerque NM 87107 Office: 505-872-7773 Fax: 505-872-7790 Cell: 505-228-4130 Cricket cell: 489-2470 [Posted in FML issue 3845]