I posted a couple of weeks ago about covering the underneath of our couch with cardboard to keep our fuzzies out of the couch and someone was gracious enough to answer me and explain that they would get in anyway cos' they'd tried it already. We were only waiting until paycheck time (3 days away) so we could buy some flooring vinyl to replace the cardboard with and they fuzzies clawed and tore a hole in the card board and managed to get back into their favorite sleeping place. OK, I thought enjoy it now because in a couple of days it will be history. Well, that night my husband decided to stay up late (very rare for him) and watch some late scary movies and about 2:00am he heard a ferret scratching at the cardboard inside the couch (the ferrets run free when we are up) but Bear wouldn't come out of the little hole they had made and so my husband tore the cardboard off the bottom to see why Bear wouldn't come out. My husband woke me up screaming for me to come help him. Bear (our use to be biggest ferret) had gotten caught in the couch and had punctured himself with the thick coil wire. It went in and back out about 1 1/4 inches apart in his lower abdomen. I held the couch while my husband slipped him off the wire (bless his heart he didn't even try to bite and I know that had to hurt!) Quick trip to my vet for emergency treatment - fortunately it was just under the skin and didn't damage anything except to put holes in his skin, and it was a flat end on the wire, not sharp - (still can't figure out how he managed to do that!) I was worried because of where it went in, right below his, well as my kids would say when they were much younger, pee pee. I was afraid it might have severed it, but my vet said not. He's doing well and almost healed now. We had the vet give him a tetanus shot and she put him on antibiotics to make sure no infection, she checked for blood in the urine etc, but gratefully he's fine. Moral, couches have springs, staples or nails and other things that can cause serious injury to our furry friends and we need to make sure it is inaccessible to them. We have put boards around the bottom of the couch so they can't even get under it anymore. Was funny to watch them at first go under the skirt that is at the bottom of the couch only to discover that it was like the wall, a dead end, but they carefully checked out every inch around it looking for the open place that had to be there so they could get into their sleeping place. One less worry, thank goodness, but a close call. But Bear has always been my "if anything weird can happen, it will happen to me" ferret. Vicky [Posted in FML issue 1610]