Well, I take back what I said yesterday about not being so freaked out about the dominance circus going on here... This morning Cully went after Amelia really aggressively-- no wounds, but pretty traumatic for all concerned. I'm just really scared that Cully will hurt Amelia badly. Should I maybe back off on the amount of time they can spend together? During the day they are in separate rooms but in the morning and evening they are free to seek one another out (after a fight with the hubbie last night, Cully stays in his cage at night-- as said spouse was saying, oh, they'll be fine, mad screams erupted from the living room-- I won). Oh the joy and agony of living with ferrets. I heard on the news yesterday that out of all the mink who were set loose in BC, about half drowned trying to cross a stream. I know mink are supposed to be good swimmers, but these animals probably never had the chance to learn, and I think it may have been a stampede kind of incident. The minks they showed on the news were huge and fat, not like any ferret I've ever seen (not that I've seen _that_ many). With the rest of us, I have to wonder what on earth good the people who opened the cages thought they were doing. The cages were small, but not horribly so, and they were outdoors, not in an enclosed shed or anything and the minks they showed did look healthy. I'm not defending ranching, mind you, but releasing these particular mink was much crueler than leaving them be. My two cents! Regina, who is too exasperated with the ferrets to pas on any messages from them [Posted in FML issue 1382]