I apologize for this Bill, but I really feel the need to talk about my first baby. My first ferret was a family pet that we got in the early eighties when I hadn't even heard of ferrets before. She was a sable female named Melissa and she was great! I admit we didn't exactly take proper safety precautions with her. She went to work with my parents every day and had free run of their tractor store. She slipped into the garage frequently, but never decided to run out the back door. She was having too much fun inside! Just about every time we rolled out a lawnmower on the showroom floor we would uncover a ferret pile. Most of the time with a tire track embedding it into the astroturf. Cutomers were commonly seen shaking their foot trying to detach a ferret from their shoe if their toes slipped under the edge of her current lawnmower shelter. You NEVER took a tractor out of the showroom if there was a warm lump hanging down in one of the grass catcher bags. She would come racing across the counter clucking as you rang up an unsuspecting customer's purchase. There was a back parts room which was small, dark, and incredibly cluttered with shelves of thousands upon thousands of parts. I believe that nothing on Earth will ever come closer to ferret heaven. She of course could scale the shelves, and she went through all of the little parts sealed up in tiny ziplock pouches and took all of her favorites. Every week we would get a box or two of parts from UPS. She was always there waiting as you opened the boxes, and she would select a few and steal them, especially those small hard rubber ones. she was even seen dragging off 3 ft. long belts for motors! It may seem ridiculous, but we actually spent a good deal of time explaining that various tractors weren't ready because the ferret stole their special order part. Some people can just never understand that sort of thing! Sometimes she bit off more than she could chew. When we got our new puppy with huge folds of extra skin, he whimpered so she ran up and decided she was going to stash him for later. She grabbed him by the nape of the neck and started dragging. His skin kept stretching and stretching, but the dog never budged. His eyes were getting stretched out, but he was too young to really move. Poor thing! He was the ultimate unsolveable ferret problem, and she tried many times until we stopped the torture. They eventually had a great friendship once he was big enough to defend himself. Melissa was a real jokester, and she did everything she could to surprise you. She would jump out from behind corners, and if you yelled, she would chuckle while she chased you from room to room. But her favorite was bed snorkeling. You would hear her thunder down the hall, and as you came into view, all snug in bed, she would screech to a halt. She would flatten to the floor and slide over to the bed. Then it was time to hand-over-hand it up the quilt like a true commando. She would slip under the quilt, still flat, and snorkel until she bumped you. Now you knew she was there, and she knew you knew she was there, but everyone pretended not to notice. She would then slide around the contours of your body slowly, figuring out where she was. When she got to your feet she would chomp down on your toes, make you scream, and then come flying out from under to bounce around on the bed laughing. She would actually be smiling (we always thought so anyway). This would happen over and over again until you put her in the cage. She lived to be around 7 yrs. old before she died of a suspected stomach cancer. (We had her put to sleep.) I will always remember every little noise she made and trick she played. After about a ten year lapse in ferret ownership, I now have another little female with just as much personality. God I LOVE ferrets!!!! Fingers and her rambling human, Cinda [Posted in FML issue 1543]