To All You Who Love Watching Ferrets Chasing Each Other on the Floor, This is for you. 1.) A new Tube Toy, easy to make and essentially Free to you. 12.30.2009. 2.) Edward Lipinski's accidental discovery offers exercise for ferrets and best of all, provides potential adopters of your rescued ferrets a time of Joy and Laughter, as they watch the scrambles of one or several ferrets scampering both inside and outside the tube, one pacing the other, side by side. All this is seen completely clearly through the transparent plastic tube walls. 3.) With the New Year's celebrations/parties almost here there will be available some, maybe many bottles of soda pop, ginger ale, orange juice, and colas of all kinds. These plastic bottles are the building blocks of what I'd like to call Pop Tubes. 4.) The pop tubes are 2 Liter(2Qt 3.6 Fluid ounces) in capacity and are thin walled, such that they can be cut easily with a razor blade and short scissors. The idea here is to cut off the bottom of the pop tube along the bottom of the circular reenforcement line. 5.) The top of the pop tube that carries the screw cap is to be cut off as well as the bottom. However, it is best to cut all around the top, maybe 2-inches down from the top, so the ojive portion can be pushed into the bottom of a second pop tube previously cut. The ojive is the surface of the top of the pop tube that circularly reduces in size to take the bottle screw stopper. 6.) Take your first two pop tubes and stuff the top of one of them - with the ojive - into the bottom of the second one, such that the two pop tubes become physically one two-piece clear tube. Next, tape onto the joint of the two pop tubes a strip of clear Scotch tape, taped along the longitudinal axis of the pop tubes, rather than circularly. I use two 2-inch lengths of tape. one on each side of the tube. Using just two strips of Scotch tape permits some limited adjustment of the tubes thereby allowing the construction of curved/circular pop tube layout. Use a lot of pop tubes. 7.) To help the scampering ferret, especially if he's being chased by a playmate, take a length of white masking tape and tape it around the two openings of the pop tube layout. This helps the chased ferret find the opening more quickly than would be the case otherwise. 8.) You will note that the ojive part of the pop tube is of smaller internal diameter than the rest of the pop tube. So the ojive cut is to be made low enough up on the pop tube (nearest the screw cap) to allow your largest ferret to get through the tubes layout without getting "stuck" in the area of the ojive. Also, you will note that the amount of ojive inserted will tend to act like a one way valve, permitting easily running through the tubes one way, but somewhat restricted running or backing up the opposite way. 9.) I've noted that some ferrets, when inside the pop tube will rotate themselves such that they appear to be scratching their backs by rolling against the edge of the ojive. So they seem to be enjoying themselves very much. After a few scratchings they sure get frisky. 10.) Edward Lipinski here hopes that you will want to make a pop tube layout for your scampering ferrets as a 2010 New Year gift. This suggestion to you may be quite worthwhile, especially if you are a penny pincher such as I. Edward Lipinski Pet Food Producer Supremacist The Only Pre-digested Flesh/Veggie Diet in the World. [Posted in FML 6563]