gabriel's always been a freaky boy, but the fact that he'll take the cherry pred of doom without any kind of ferret crack-convincing is just amazing. i'll give him some ferretone afterwards, just as a treat, but he doesn't mind the taste at all. if i don't pick up the syringe fast enough, he'll try to stash it as a flava saver for later. so freakish. lucy has the more appropriate reaction of utter repulsion. even the mighty ferretone crack love doesn't help assuage her. tiki was a much the same. she hated all her meds, even after we got fancy flavored ones for her (a pharm called prescription specialties will do chicken, liver, "sweet", and other flavors for ferrets). after tiki died last march, corey and i were devastated. i sent a quick note out to all her friends (she had so many human admirers!), and wept for months. i couldn't even look at the leftover baby food and meds in the fridge the first few days after, it was just too much. and i couldn't bring myself to write to the FML, i just needed to deal with it on my own in my own time before i could talk to anyone else about it. we had tiki cremated primarily because we live in an apartment. even if we had a yard for our building, i wouldn't feel right leaving her here. but then we had the issue of what to do with the ashes. my own personal beliefs make me want to set her free somewhere, somehow. or perhaps bury them outside the box. my parents have set aside a spot for her in the garden patch of daisies next to missy, the dauchsund/terrier mix who was the little sister of our family and much beloved. for now they sit in the little white box they came in in the living room, right next to the tikaboo (one of her nicknames), the bamboo plant sent to us a few days after she died. when we water the tikaboo, we say hello to tiki. it's quite a nice memorial, i think. :) corey still keeps a photo of her and i sleeping together as his desktop wallpaper. for the first little while, it was too hard to look at it, but now it's nice. it's corey's own memorial of her. hugs to all who need them, fuzzy and human alike. andrea and the somerville dynamic duo, lucy and gabe [Posted in FML issue 4051]