Hi. I'm writing to say I've been a temporary victim of FERRET MATH. We usually have three ferrets, but this weekend I counted nine furballs running around my house. Here are my thoughts on having ridiculous numbers of ferrets. First: It's tons of fun. Whenever one group of ferrets gets sleepy, you can go wake up another group! You get nine times as many kisses and nine times as many games and tons of precious moments (like the time I had five ferrets sitting on my feet begging for attention while I was trying to use the toilet :). On the other hand--nine ferrets produces fully one hundred times as much ferret doo doo as three ferrets. Yuck! And litter training is almost impossible to enforce as you can not keep up with one bm per ferret eight times per day. (Hmmm, that's 72 poops a day! Oh my god! I've been cleaning them all!!!) How do you crazy folks with ten, fifteen, even twenty ferrets keep your house from smelling and looking like a barnyard all the time? I found everything seemed quite pleasant immediately after I cleaned litterboxes and "accidents" as there was only one fresh pile in each accident spot. ;) "Oh, you cleaned that up? Thank god, I've really GOT to go!" But that only lasted maybe an hour. Well, anyway, I am the ferret sitter extroardinaire, now. In spite of the fun, I'm looking forward to the day when we will be back to three fuzzballs and only 24 poops a day. -Catherine PS. Don't even ASK about the tooth scars on my feet. I'm starting to think one of the rascals would look better as a mink coat for Barbie. PPS. No, I will not ferret sit for you. I need until August of '97 to recuperate. [Posted in FML issue 1662]