Hi, this is Denise, Rocko's mom - Alayne M. Whaley wrote: "..... He made a noise I've never heard him make before and whenever I looked at him, his mouth was open, as if to show his teeth. The noise, at first, seemed to me like short puffs of air leaking from a balloon. Can't figure out how else to describe it. He seemed to be attacking her, and didn't stop the hissing ..." Rocko makes a similar sound. When he's in a "fighting" mood, he hops around with his mouth open and makes a repeated "kih kih" sound. When I asked about this, a few other FML'ers said their little furries made a sound like that. I have a question about how friendly ferrets tend to be. Rocko is really sweet and tolerant - he lets basically anyone pet and hold him, and shows interest in most pets (tries to play with cats, and is respectful of big dogs; hasn't met a small dog yet). He's very calm, too - he showed no problems at meeting my fiance's entire family at a get-together. Some people who've met ferrets before say that he's one of the most friendly ones they've seen. So what is the "typical" ferret temperament? I know that there are the occasional ferrets who are even snippy towards their "family," but are ferrets just getting a bad reputation from the occasional one? Did I unwittingly "train" him to be unusually calm and sweet? If there is a general impression of ferrets as biting, a bit nasty, and otherwise not very nice, no wonder it's hard to get rid of FFZ legislation. Finally, Rocko's only 13 weeks old, and he's already 16" long - that's supposed to be average length for males, but he's still young. Is he going to get _bigger_? He only weighs 2 lbs., according to the vet, so he's not big that way. :) Denise, Rocko ("I especially like people who have cat treats!") and Grumpy (teddy bear hamster who doesn't like "eau de mustelid" up close, for obvious reasons!) [Posted in FML issue 0884]