I just caught up with a few days' worth of FMLs and had a few responses/items to post... Free roam ferrets: my ferrets have always been free roam in my bedroom 24/7, with access to most of the rest of the house when people are home (no kitchen or bathroom). I believe my ferrets are happier and healthier this way, but it does mean certain trade-offs. One is the obvious: litter training is more difficult. They do tend to use consistent places however, so placing a box or paper in those spots works pretty well. Another is that they can bug the heck out of you at night with scratching at your legs or nibbling on your toes. In my experience if you calmly haul them out from under the covers, tell them to quit it and place them calmly on the floor, they get the hint after the tenth time or so and let you sleep (just kidding about the tenth time part. sort of.). Neither of my current weasels sleep in the bed, but Amelia slept in my nightshirt every night for years and had no qualms about shoving me over if she felt I was taking up too much room :) And there's nothing like waking up on a weekend morning to a little furry face peeking at you wondering if you're going to get up and play. There are also arguments about controlling photoperiods; because my ferrets have a den under the foot of the bed and we have black bedding, they do actually have a light-proof sleeping area even without a cage, which is kind of neat. And then of course you have to be even more hypervigilant about ferretproofing, and there's the issue of knowing where they are in the case of an emergency. Mostly I am citing negative things here, but that's to show that free roam is not a decision to be made lightly, but one that I think is worth making if your personal circumstances allow it. Meat-eating: well, if ferrets could operate fishing trawlers, Seti would do fine in the wild--he's developed a taste for calimari rings. I'm not sure whether it was the breading or the rubbery texture or the oil they were fried in, but he thought they were a great treat. So if Seti ever gets loose, all those squids had better watch their tentacles! :) Silliness: and if squid aren't silly enough, here's something even sillier--an example of genetic experimentation gone horribly wrong over at Muppet Labs: http://www.livejournal.com/users/monsterweasels/ :) Regina Regina Harrison [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] http://www.channel1.com/users/regina/ blog: http://www.channel1.com/users/regina/zblog.html Is that my business? Well, what is my business? Do I know? Did I ever know? Let s not go into that. You re not human tonight, Marlowe. Maybe I never was or ever will be... Maybe we all get like this in the cold half-lit world where always the wrong thing happens and never the right. --Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister [Posted in FML issue 4028]