As every ferret owner is well aware ferret poop could be used as an epoxy to hold together the space shuttle as it is resistant to even the most vigorous attempts at removal. Over the past few years I, like many of you have had my eye out for a product that will make ferret poop removal simple and fun (well maybe not fun, but bearable). I am allergic to most chemicals and I never really found them to be any more effective then the enzyme products anyway I would use just for ferrets, and oxyclean with hot water and hard work. A few years ago I saw an add for the steam buggy it was blasting away grime and nastiness in an oven and on an outdoor grill, immediately I think if it will do that to baked on caked on creosote what could it do to ferret poop. After researching it on the Internet, I found that the steam buggy came up lacking in the blasting power department. Enter the europro steam shark (AKA the EP-93). I saw one advertised at linens & things for about $145.00 I figured that if it made ferret room cle aning simpler it would be worth every cent. I have had the blaster for about 2 months and I wanted to offer you guys a review. THE UP SIDE: Blasts poop just like you think it should!!! THE DOWN SIDE: It is hard to get the smell of vaporized ferret poo out of your sinuses. THE VERDICT: Has some irritating features but it really does work. MY STORY: As soon as I brought it out of the box I noticed a few irritating features. The first was that it only has a 5 foot cord so I would have to move the plug around the ferret room as I worked, dragging it through the yuck. I also discovered that it has a little button on the handle that you must hold down for steam to come out. In my opinion it really is stupid, you have to wait for the light on the body of the steamer to turn green, then you must press the button HARD a few seconds later and steam starts shooting out. Once you let up on the button it stops making steam in the tank but it takes another 45 + seconds for it to actually stop blowing hot steam. My thumb kills me when I am done cleaning the room I have started using a piece of cloth to hold the button on always. We interrupt this story for a word from our sponsor . Come to find out that the step up the EP-95 has cooler features, a longer cord, and supposedly no button to push. I was on gardenweb.com and someone said that it is an on/off switch, from what I can gather this product is only available on the Internet it sounded like most people bought it from vacuum-discounter.com. Now back to my story The first thing I did was dig my ferrets out of the box the steam cleaner came in, and put them in a cadge in another room. I did not want the ferrets any where around the steam as it turns out the cleaner makes a high-pitched noise (it was not irritating to me but it might hurt my kids wittle ears). I filled up the blaster and armed myself with towels galore. My kids are under strict instructions from the ferret Gods to never use the litter box. Because of this religious aversion to litter pans they use the Sunday paper carefully placed in the corners of the room every night only to be dragged into the middle of the room because my littlest girl will not tolerate paper in the corners. Needless to say, I have a lot of poo and pee on the floor of the room. Before the blaster it would take me about 2 hours if I wanted to scrub the room super clean. With the steamer, I was AMAZED at how effective this thing was, it blasted the poop to smithereens. Now that I have a system down (see below) I can start with a dirt y room and be done in less than an hour and it is CLEAN!. No residual poop stuck to the floor anywhere, it was a total miracle. MY SYSTEM: It has taken some revising but I have a system down now that works well. I remove the ferrets from the room I pick up all of the paper and solid matter that has not welded itself to the floor. I sweep the floor with my special ferret room icky broom, and mop it with hot water and enzyme. Once I mop the easy stuff up, I arm myself with the steamer and get to work with the little round scrubby attachment and a handful of towels. WARNING you must remember to keep your face away from the steam not because it is hot (it is) but because the smell of vaporized ferret nastiness is strong enough to peel paint off a wall. I could not get the smell to go away even when I changed clothes, it turns out it was stuck in my sinuses or hair or something, once I took a long hot shower with lots of flowery soap the smell was gone. END COMMENTS: I do wish that I had bought the better blaster but I am happy with the results of this one. Besides I would not have felt right returning something after I cleaned the ferret room with it. I marked the ferret room scrubby tip with duct tape so I would not accidentally use it to clean my stove and I use the steamer all over my house my house. It works great on sink edges, greasy smudges that won t scrub off cabinets, shower doors and their track. I use it around the bottom of the toilette (I have a 5 year old nephew who stays over a lot) again watch out for the steam. I have found that I cannot get it to clean my floors with the floor attachment but I really don t care. I have to say that I am really pleased with the product. [Posted in FML issue 3861]