A comment on wire chewing. A friend of mine's ferret chewed a wire near their bed one night. The ferret looked dead, her husband gave mouth to nose while my friend called the vet emergency service. They really don't know if the mouth to nose helped but the ferret did recover and is as "Spunky" as ever. (She is a nipper, especially noses). I'd like to see if this works for anyone else. I have had very limited success with it but then I'm not trying all that hard. My two are not litter-box trained. I gave up EARLY and just put newspaper down in all their favorite spots. I just recently thought "well hey, maybe putting the recycyled paper pellets in a box would seem an awful lot like newspaper". You know, sort of an association thing. I have gotten more "hits" with this than ever before - though its still pretty limited. Maybe this will work ior someone else? Scootching backwards with something in paws. Well I was watching Giesela dig at a ground squirrel hole again today and she was in there really digging (dirt flying out backwards with her head in the hole) then noticed that she would back out, put her paws aroudn the built up dirt and scootch backwards, to get the build up away from the mouth of the hole. Since carrying dirt in your mouth isn't all that efficient, maybe this is a dirt moving/removal thing from the days of living in burrows. On the MF thing (1) there are other ways of making a living and (1a) how much money vs. good care does a place need to make (2) I said there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ferrets themselves, (3) I realize there are bad backyard breeders thats not the point, nor is my point anything to do with genetics since at this point who can say (4) the research thing is not where I'm coming from at all, (5) when your spoiling and saying thank you for your baby say a prayer for its mom and dad who are having a miserable life. Mary, Boris and Giesela P.S. Hey, we all love 'em and that's what counts most, spirited disagreement is the stuff of life (at least in my ethnic background:) [Posted in FML issue 1695]