Dear Ferret Folks- Ping is He was so ridiculous the other night that I just had to share. He is a bone collector. Chicken bones, to be specific. He goes spelunking in the trash to find them and retrieve them. Now, I don't really have a problem with this, depending upon what type of bone it is. I trust Bob Church when he says the occasional bone gnaw is good for his teeth. (Ping's, not Bob's, although I don't know the man personally and cannot speak to his dietary habits.) Anyway, as long as Ping is interested in drumstick bones, I let him have them. Soft, hollow, probably lots of good marrow inside. I'm more worried about something like a rib bone that seems to me to have really sharp ends when broken. So, lucky Ping, he can actually *have* the drumstick bone he steals from the trash. Where we have a conflict is on the number of bones he may steal at once. I think one is quite sufficient. Ping has another vision. He wants ALL of them. He wants to take them and stash them beneath my deep green velvety sofa in the living room, for consumption at his liesure. This is at odds with my one meal, one bone idea, but I am bigger than Ping, and equally as stubborn. The other night drumsticks were on sale for .99 cents a pound, and I baked up a whole mess of them. Like a dozen. I caught Ping with a bone in his mouth, headed for the sofa. I took it and put it in the ferret room. Then, I caught Ping with a bone in his mouth, headed for the sofa. I took it away.Then, I caught Ping with a bone in his mouth, headed for the sofa. I took it away. Then, I caught Ping with a bone in his mouth, headed for the sofa. I took it away. You get the idea. I got tired of that game. The way my kitchen is set up, I can't really keep him out of the trash. So I had to go bone fishing myself to stop the cycle, placing them out of his reach. Ah, but he had one left that I hadn't found. I found him with it in his mouth, headed for the sofa. I decided to demonstrate to him in a fashion that he could understand that he could not *have* the bone. I took one end of the bone in my hand, so that he had the other in his teeth, and was standing on his tippy toes trying to hold onto it. I shook my end. He would not let go. I started to walk out of the living room. Ping followed like a dog on a leash, his teeth firmly embedded in his end of the bone. I made a sharp right turn, and off we went, the length of the house... Have you ever seen footage of that bizarre lizard that 'walks' on water, little bitty back legs flailing and splashing while it skims along open mouthed, trying to look like a fierce nature-photographer eating dragon? Ping's little back legs looked like that, as he quick-stepped off of the living room carpet and onto the kitchen linoleum. He glared at me with one eye, and panted a breathy little hiss the whole time. His pink toe pads gripped the linoleum firmly, and he toddled along without missing a beat. We walked right past the Ferret Room, and kept on going. We entered the back hall by the bathroom and the computer room, and finally, a full sixty feet after we began our little contest of the wills, he lost his grip on his end of the bone, and collapsed onto the floor like an overboiled piece of macaroni. He just lay there, and huffed once in a meaningful way. Oh, I may have won the battle, but he made it clear that I *really* sucked. Then he walked; not scampered, not bounded, not hopped, not any of those normal ferret gaits....he just walked away, slowly, his tail hanging, head low. And there I was, LUCKY ME! WITH MY OWN CHICKEN BONE! I hardly knew what to do with myself. Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML issue 4900]