Finally, someone else that has a ferret that does this. In our case however, I suspected that this was a form of stereotypic behavior due to severe neglect. When we got Smoke, he had been rescued from a crate type box/cage that was outside. It was very enclosed. He was seized due to severe life threatening neglect. Smoke was estimated to be at least nearly three. We have no idea how much of his life was spent in that outside enclosure. He is now 5-7 years of age. He does the chopping thing when ever he gets in a tight space. He does it repetetively, barely scraping what's above his head. He will roll over on his back and do this in the open also when he is either over stimmed or bored. When he gets going with it, it's like he's totally enthralled with it, and its hard to redirect him. I agree it's really an odd and adorable thing. But we always assumed this might be from his abuse, so we could not really smile much about it, ya know? Out of curiousity, have you raised this ferret since it was a kit, or was it a rescue? Wolfy [Posted in FML issue 4219]