I have been following TLE's move and exploits with the outdoor run. I would like to relate my experiences with "outdoor" ferrets. I had to move in with my parents in Florida for 6 months, with my 3 fuzzies. My parents' entire back yard is a screened-in patio (about 100 feet by 25 feet) with a cement deck. In the cement deck several large "holes" were left for planting flowers (each about 6 feet by 3 feet). These were all planted with beautiful flowers and shrubs. The ferrets had a ball playing in the "yard" - They were always supervised because there also is a swimming pool in this deck. I did not have to worry about predatory birds, and the ferrets ran all over playing in the shrubs, patio furniture, etc. I would sit for hours and read while they ran around until they got hot and asked to go back inside for air conditioning. I never had any problems with the screens enclosing the porch - the ferrets did not try to climb or dig at them. The only screen that was a problem was the one going back into the house (Sweet Pea would get hot and want to go inside, and slashed the screen with her claws and jumped through into the house). The problem was the flower beds. The ferrets loved to dig! They dug up lots of flowers, much to my mother's chagrin. Then they started digging tunnels around the roots of the shubbery. I was under the mistaken impression for quite some time that these were shallow tunnels limited to the flower beds. WRONG! After investigation, it turned out that they had tunnelled under the foundation of the house! These tunnels were at least ten feet long. My father sunk bricks into the edges of the flower beds to a depth of 12 inches to block the tunnels. Things seems OK for awhile, until I noticed that they could enter one flower bed and come up in another! They had just dug deeper to get under the bricks. We then discovered a tunnel traversing most of the length of the patio -- there was nothing to stop them from digging out from the porch and into the great outdoors by tunneling under the cement slab. In a heroic move, my father completely dug up three flower beds to a depth of 3 feet, completely removed everything, and lined the beds (sides and floor) with a cage of hardware wire screening. Then he refilled the beds and my mother painstakingly replanted all the greenery. The ferrets were quite disgusted with our efforts, but it was effective. So beware of unattended outdoor enclosures! My Sweet Pea could tunnel effortlessly into any lawn, dirt pile, or ground cover. And quickly, too, at the rate of 1 foot per every five minutes on a good day. Erika (and Sasha, Misty, and Lizzie) [Posted in FML issue 1293]