Well, I just relearned the lesson that there is *no* such thing as "ferret proof." I have a large (three story) cage I built for my 3-year-old female, Chaos. I figured that it would be safer for her in there at night and when I am not home than if she were running around the house. Safer, yes, but not completely safe. When I was getting ready to leave for work this morning, I looked into her cage and was surprised to see that she hadn't gotten up to say good-bye to me. She was moving around under the covers of her bed, though. Her bedding was a part of an old robe. Normally, she sleeps in an old sweatshirt, but I was cleaning it so I gave her the robe instead. Anyway, it looked somehow weird, so I opened the cage and went to uncover her and pick her up, but I couldn't. Chaos had chewed through one end of a seam, crawled into the half-inch-wide seam, and gotten stuck at the far end of it. She had apparently been stuck in there all night since the litter box was unused, but she had soiled the inside of the tube several times. She had tried to chew her way out of the end of the tube, but wasn't very successful. Needless to say, I had a somewhat panicky ferret squeezed into a tiny tube. Not a pretty sight. The seam was too strong for me to simply rip, so I had to get some scissors. Now, this had seemed like a good idea at the time, but then I realized I had to cut into a piece of cloth into which a struggling ferret was *stuffed*. I cut into the seam, but not all the way through, to weaken it. I then got a small hole started so I could rip it open by hand. This would have worked great except that I made the mistake of cutting close enough to her front end so that she could get her nose and part of her head through. Now I had to push Chaos, who was doing her damnedest to crawl out through the tiny hole, back into the seam far enough so I could get a finger hold to rip the cloth. Have you ever tried to push toothpaste back into the tube. I figure that would have been about as easy. I got the seam ripped open far enough for her to ooze out. Her back end was covered in urine and excrement, so she needed a bath. This is not something that I would generally attempt when I am dressed in work clothes and late for work. While I went to change and grab some shampoo, Chaos ran continually around the kitchen like a complete psychotic, generally dragging her butt on the floor like she does after she uses the litter box. I gave her a quick bath (shower really - I use the spray attachment on the sink), and she pooped and peed while in the sink. After I dried her off, she ran around for a couple minutes more, got several drinks, and started to eat. Since she seemed to be running normally now, and eating and drinking OK, I decided to head off to work. This is probably the stupidest thing she has ever done, topping her previous record of getting her head stuck in a cardboard tube and then cartwheeling down the basement stairs. Anyway, I just thought I would warn people about seemingly innocuous bedding material. Life is never dull with a ferret. Frank -- ============================================================================== Frank Weil | [log in to unmask] | phone: (708) 576-3110 | fax: (708) 576-3131 Interviewer: So you are the camp co-ordinator. What does that entail? Venture Scout: Well, basically, I co-ordinate the camp. - '8.15 From Manchester', BBC1 TV [Posted in FML issue 0440]