Wow! Strange number karma going on in the FML: 1286 lines in issue 1287 with 1288 subscribers. This probably happened because today I finally caught up with the list after months of trying :-) Only good news on the home front, happily. Michelle and I just moved to a new apartment (which doesn't allow pets, so our two fuzzies are in hiding -- shh!) with a lot more room overall and a huge storage room for all of our junk. Our ferrets now have fewer piles of interesting boxes and junk to explore, but they have much more room to run around in. They are going wild chasing each other all around the apartment and wrestling! They are also having fun getting under the bathroom cabinets and behind the refrigerator, which they couldn't do in the old place -- we are closing off those areas quickly. Our new apartment doesn't have air conditioning, so we are running fans almost all of the time to try to keep the place cool. We gave the ferrets their own personal fan for while they are in their cage. I put a 6-inch diameter fan about 4 feet away from their cage on low speed. They LOVE it! And they get very annoyed when the fan isn't on. Nikkei even tried to turn it back on when he was out of the cage once. He bit it in some places and poked his nose into some other places trying to get it to go. He only succeeded in pulling it down on top of himself. When it's on, both ferrets immediately flop down and spread out on their backs to get the cool breeze. We also tried a blue-ice cooler pack (blue plastic rectangular thing) once on an extra-warm day. The ferrets didn't like it much at first because it was too cold. They pushed it around the cage for a while and played with it. Then after it warmed up a bit they played king-of-the-ice-pack, pushing each other off so they could spread out on top of it. Cool breezes and cool fuzzies to all (and hello to the other Kirk and Michelle)! Kirk (I wonder how long until they discover the spiral staircase?) Michelle (ok, ok, I'll turn on the fan again) Nikkei (dook dook dook, run run run, flop) Dax (oooh, stairs) [Posted in FML issue 1288]