Ok, I'm one who was going to stay out of this debate, but here I am. I think the word "fun" is an issue. I believe that word is misleading. I truly feel that words such as excitement, survival or instinct are more accurate. Excitement does not n ecessarily mean "fun". I had a ferret, Hot Shot, who with all of my other ferrets had free roam of the house. 11 totaled at the time. I fed birds outside the front door for years. Unbeknownst to me I had a rat living under the tree that held the bird feeder. Hot Shot, however, knew it was there and would worry the front door something fierce. He would pace back and forth, dig or just sit and stare. Finally I just stood and watched out the window to see what had his attention. Finally I saw it as it poked his head out of the ground and grabbed seed. I have no doubt in my mine that Hot Shot would have dispatched that rat in a heartbeat. Not due to survival but purely on instinct. I also have two cats. Louie is quite the mouser. I live in a farming community so I get the occasional mouse. As we all know cats tend to play with mice before they kill. Louie got himself a mouse and was doing just that. Well, mouse escaped, cat got bored and walked away. Enter in my little gal ferret, Rascal. She walked over the spot where the mouse had been and went into hunt mode. Mouse was under a book shelf. She flattened down went under shelf, grabbed the mouse, pulled it out and killed it before I could blink. She gave it a shaking and that was it. It all happened so fast I was amazed. None of my other ferrets paid any mind at all. Not even my Bradley who had been raised outside all of his life until I received him at 5 yrs of age. In nature the best hunters and killers are the ones to survive. Nature is not always pretty and pleasant but it is what it takes to survive in the wild. Nature never ceases to amaze me even when it is what we consider nasty. But humans are no different when instinct kicks in for survival. Just how I see things. Terry and 8 Happy Little Scampers [Posted in FML 6225]