Foggy's Second Adventure with The Wonderful Magical Treasure Box.... After completing my morning chores accompanied by intense crunching, crackling, Mrrr noises and wild chirping from Foggy's enclosure it was time to do his dressing change so I opened the gate and reached in intending to scoop Foggy up and carry him to the rocker to work on him. However I immediately encountered an unforseen snag in my usual routine with him. As I lifted him up he chomped down on the side seam of the Krinkly Sack and wrapped his entire body around all if it he could reach and hung on for dear life. There was no way I could extract my large hand, one determined ferret and a large and rather noisy sack thru the gateway to his enclosure. Now everyone knows how surprisingly strong a ferret can be when it wants to be, and Foggy wasn't giving an inch. I had a ferret with an Attitude and was at a loss as to how I was going to get his dressings done. I talked, pleaded, and sternly demanded he relinquish that sack. I might as well have been talking to the wall. Finally I wedged my other hand inside and after prying his mouth open three times (Boy, is he quick) and pulling him in one direction while pulling the sack in the other I managed to extricate Foggy from his enclosure without the beloved sack! He was making very distressed noises and nearly breaking his neck to keep the sack in sight all the way. I felt like a class A heel. No amount of reassurance and petting would calm his terror that the sack would vanish forever. At this point I got an inspired thought...THE BOX! With a firm grip on te struggling fuzzy I dragged the box over to the rocker and held him tummy down over the open box and scritched the white paper on top with my nails until his curiosity got the best of him and he glanced down. Then he strained so far over the edge of my hand he looked more like a snake than a ferret. He withdrew up onto my arm and after rapidly looking back and forth from his enclosure (where the precious Krinkly sack resided) to my face several times he stopped and looked at me very seriously and intently for several seconds... His message was loud and clear..."I am holding you personally responsible for the security of my Krinkly Sack! Anything happens to that Sack and your Toast!" Then his head dove back over the side reaching for the Wonderful Mysterious Treasure Box. While all this by play was going on I had removed his dressings (more for protection now than anything else as the skin is closed and only tiny pinpoint spots mark the places the stitches were). The leg ends are extremely sensitive however and the dressings are insurance against any possible bump or hard tap against something as that could be very painful for him. I try to let the legs be open to the air as many hours a day as I can manage and have increased the time each day. So his legs were exposed to the air when he was lowered until his head vanished under the paper to discover what was hidden from sight. He wiggled first one way then another for a bit then out popped his head with a mouthful of ribbons. My first reaction was 'Ribbons?'. He tugged and he pulled and he tugged some more but whatever he had chosen wasn't budging. So I snuck my fingers under his chin and felt around until I discovered a part of as ribbon that did not seem to be one he had in his gripped between his teeth. The next time he started pulling again I pulled with him and the 'something' attached began to emerge into view. It was very soft and sort of furry and just kept coming and coming. When it was finally all out on top I could see he had grabbed onto a tuft of ribbon sewn to one corner and that the other three corners also had ribbons. Only after dragging fuzzy and still chomped on object up onto my lap did I get a good look at what he had. It was the biggest, softest, warmest, fluffy fleece blanket I have ever seen! Immediately lifting him up I pulled it over my lap and laid him down on it and removed the hand supporting his weight. He was so surprised he dropped the ribbons and just laid there with his mouth hanging open! I had to laugh at the look of stunned disbelief he had on his funny little face. At first he only moved a fraction of an inch and froze, but soon he was making larger and larger movements with his bare legs and after only a couple of minutes he was doing a pretty good imitation of an inch worm doing the breast stroke. He rolled, he swam on his tummy, he wriggled, and no matter where his legs touched the blanket it was obvious it felt SOOOOO GOOD! I felt he had had enough after half an hour of chirps and moving all over and picked him up to redress his legs. And got a big shock! For the first time, after all the misery and pain Foggy had been thru, he Bit. Not me. the dressings! No amount of coaxing or insistent wrapping and rewrapping got me anywhere, as fast as I wrapped one leg he had the dressing off another leg. It wasn't long before I figured out there was no way he was going to allow me to redress his legs - ever again! I gave in to the inevitable and after spreading the blanket over his entire floor area I left him purring and chirping snuggled up in a large fold of his new gloriously soft blanket. And just as I sat down to get this chapter of his healing onto paper I heard the telltale Krinkle - Crackle that told me he had pulled his beloved Krinkly Sack over to his nest and was contentedly contemplating his enormous riches. The Marvelous Magical Treasure Box is back in its corner and the fuzzy is sound asleep with his wonderful new things...and yes, he is smiling from ear to ear. I have no doubt he is dreaming peaceful happy ferret dreams for the very first time in his little life. 'Nite all.....dayna dayna frazier 102046,3162 'resident of the 'Marvellous Menagerie of Mirthful Mayhem' MMOMM!!! [Posted in FML issue 1580]