It is a Miracle. I am cured, I am cured! Very simple really. Start this process in March. Take fairly large dose of jills in season and place them with hobs who are happy to be of service. Wait required 42 days. Amazing tiny ferret life-forms appear. Go into frenzy of rapture. Repeat this rapture with each litter. Watch with reverent rapture as they grow. Mother takes care of babies completely for first few weeks. Your provide cleanliness of surroundings and nutritional support for mother. Kits get bigger and start to poop approximately every 5 minutes. More amazing ferret-life forms appear with more dear mamas - process repeats. Kits grow, producing poop every 5 minutes. Poops grow too. Soon your life revolves around cage cleaning, litter box emptying, mush mixing, etc., etc. Continue this project for 4 months. Getting harder to keep up with the amazing poop producers. Making daily trips to grocery store for litter. (Buy stock in PineFresh - I am their best customer). Making daily runs to various pet supply stores. Getting up earlier to keep ahead of poop producers, and falling behind. Coming home at night and finding poop producers cages look like chicken coops. When not cleaning cages, find yourself running to the vet every other day to take care of problems. Notify bank to pre-print all checks with name of local vet hospital and supply stores and vet catalog supplies. One day your realize - Rapture Is Wearing Off. Cure is at hand! By this time you have also realized that you cannot keep a kit from every litter. Usually kit rapture compells you to keep a baby from first few litters. You may even fall into kit rapture with other breeder's kits and aquire a few too. However, as much as you adore these new additions - you know you have been cured when you do not contemplate keeping any kits from later season litters. I Have Been Cured. Unfortunately, like the distemper vaccines we administer to our fuzzies, it is not known of the cure is lasting. There is a strong proclivity for relapse. This is called ferret breeder's amnesia syndrome. By the next season you have totally forgotten all of the above and the rapture starts again. For those of you who have human children as well as ferret children, will know what I mean. No human on earth would have more than one child if they did not develop "mothering amnesia". This is a condition where, as your first child leaves infancy and starts to grow, you completely forget what pregnancy and birth is like, sleepless nights, diapers, being a human milk bar on demand, etc., etc., and a strong desire asserts itself for another baby. And it is only when you are again in labor that you might think "Wait......" But of course it is too late. Cheers to all and have a safe and happy Fourth. Meg [Posted in FML issue 1623]