Dear Ferret Folks- It was the darkest heart of the night, and dagnabit, I COULDN'T SLEEP! I didn't want to keep my husband up so I took my book and my reading classes (very retro with rhinestones) out into the living room to read quietly until I got tired. It was very welcoming in the living room. It's kind of a shock to go back and forth to Mexico as I do, it makes me appreciate home more. Some part of me expected to open the bedroom door onto my Mother's Mexican patio, to the soft rustling of banana leaves and the swooping arcs of foot-long bats snatching mosquitoes out of the gentle tropical night sky. But no, I found myself in Massachusetts where we had been pounded with snow and blizzard strength winds, then thunder and lightning, then rain and freezing temperatures. It was *good*, it was really, really good to be inside with the woodstove. My living room was lit by the blue strings of lights on the Christmas tree. The dog, the Noble Allis Chompers raised her head from where she lay curled up on the sofa and gave her woofle--snort--woofle--snort that she gives to pack members in the middle of the night. It means basically "wadda ya want? I was sleeping." It's a very different sound than a stranger would get at two in the morning. I moved over to turn on an overhead light and as I did I noticed something out of the corner of my eye...It was the tree skirt, the decorative piece of fabric that SHOULD have been lying spread out on the ground beneath the tree. Instead, some ferret or ferrets had pulled it out of position and left it wadded up half-beneath the tree like a wet towel abandoned on the floor after a shower. I was home, I was home. Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML 6543]