Hi all, I've been lurking through the FML for about a month and a half now, and figured it's finally time to come out of the closet. I am Jennifer, a 24 year old human owned by Dare, a 14 week old male butterscotch fuzzball I absolutely adore. I've had relatively few problems since I got him 5 weeks ago, all of them minor....Until now.. {hahaha}.... What's happenening the past few days is that Dare will wake up between three and four o'clock in the morning, and start making a racket wanting to get out of his cage...{I don't want to start the caging debate again...I have to cage him at night since I still live with my family, who continually come in and out of the room, and 2 dogs; 1 of which still thinks I bought the ferret to serve to him as dessert}. I've tried both bitter apple and nose thwapping, to no avail. The first night it went on for about 45 minutes, despite spraying the cage door numerous times, and a few rubs of the nose in bitter apple. Reluctantly, i took him out for half an hour, just to shut him up, and I finally got to sleep at 5 in the morning <UGH!!> What I've been doing the last couple of nights is trying again with the spray for about five minutes, and when that doesn't work, I leave the room until the noise stops {usually about 20-30 minutes}. I'm guessing it's just natural for ferrets to do this. It's not like I leave him in the cage all day--he's out from the time I wake up till the time I'd *like* to go to sleep, so he should be plenty tired when I finally put him in for the night. I love my ferret, and would never give him up or do anything to hurt him...but...I NEED MY SLEEP!! It's getting to the point where I have a hard time concentrating on anything {Actually, a hard time just functioning-- period!! <laugh>}... Any advice would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks to all you fertlovers, Jennifer and Dare [Posted in FML issue 1634]