Dear Ferret Folks- We have a house guest for a few weeks. Her name is Tina, and she is an enormous Red-Eared Slider freshwater turtle. She is five, and her plastron (love that word, means her belly-shell) is two-thirds the size of a paperback book. She weighs a couple of pounds. And being a reptile, she cannot generate her own body heat. Well....that is somewhat inconvenient in my home. We heat with a wood stove and her tank has to be near it or she will become quite ill and perhaps die. Accordingly, my central kitchen island is now taken over by TWO fifty-five gallon fish tanks. Yup. One for my personal goldfish, one for Tina and her little feeder goldfish. Her tank is the one nearest the wood stove. Do I have much counter space at the moment? No, but I have free turtle TV. She is very interesting to watch. Especially when she goes hunting for her little feeder goldfish in the water with her. She goes from clunky-looking Jurrasic left-over to sleek, effective predator. Turtles do not have particularly expressive features, but she manages to convey great satisfaction taken in basking beneath her turtle-approved UV light. Do I think it is completely NUTS that I now have TWO fifty five gallon fish tanks on my kitchen island? Yeah. There is that. Plus the fact that I have bought her about fifty dollars worth of turtle necessities for her visit as her owner is flat, flat broke. What is it about men that they will throw away a *perfectly* good wife because they like the look of some other man's wife? I dunno. I mean, I really like my husband. A dozen years and I finally have him more or less broken in. Nothing could induce me to start the process all over again. But I digress... So far I have gotten Tina a special floating dock so that she can stay high and dry. I also got her a turtle approved splash-proof halogen lamp to bask with. My hubby set the lamp up with an automatic timer so it shuts itself on and off to mimic day/night. Her owner, after sixteen years of marriage and three children is surviving on fluffer nutter sandwiches and could not afford these things. Well, I could. So I got them. Never let it be said that I am not a gracious host. Now. Where does the word "ferret" enter into this? It does, of course. Todd and Caff-Pow are accustomed to free access to that kitchen island. Honestly, there is no sane way that I could keep them off. Many is the time I have seen my hubby gently pick Todd up and hold him up to the top of my goldfish tank so that he may enjoy a deep, refreshing drink of fish-water. 'Pow is big enough to get his own drink without much effort. He usually goes onto the island to scrounge for people food. If that doesn't pan out he simply jumps into the fifty gallon standing trash can and roots. (There has been a recent discussions of the pros and cons of enormous ferrets. I could tell you stories about life with enormous ferrets! Including their uncanny ability to jump really, really high. ) Ferret musk and old coffee grounds is a peculiar mix, at best. But now, of course, there is something new. So it MUST be explored. Todd satisfied his curiosity about Tina early on. He recoiled in horror, and that was that. 'Pow likes to leap onto the top of her tank cover and see if there is some way to pry if off, gnaw through it, etc. There is not. We thought of that ahead of time. But he likes to sit next to her tank and just *look* at her speculatively. If it were up to him, he would have her upside-down on the floor in a heartbeat, clawed flippers waving wildly. Then he would do his best to *pull* her bodily out of that shell by one flipper. I know Caff-Pow. I know him. So he can only look, and claw at the tank lid and *wish*, really hard. Sometimes Tina takes some exercise by crawling around on the floor attached to her leash. This does NOT happen when the boys are out. Nope. And it's not gonna. 'Pow shakes his cage bars, rolls on a plastic shelf like a bull alligator pushing himself over and over with frenzied paws. He so *wants* that turtle. Well, 'Pow, what's it like to want. I want a 1966 Cadillac Fleetwood convertable, but I don't have one. Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML 6885]