Hi about ferrets gettng on the balcony. When we moved into our new place which had a balcony on the third floor the first thing I did ( before even unpacking:)) was to place plexi-glass all around the railing. Couldn't use chicken wire etc. for a number of reasons; 1) condo so had to worry about the neighbours complaining, 2) My ferrets are quite capable of climbing anything they can get a grip on be it wire or pantlegs. We have a rather large balcony so it took 6 sheets of 60" * 30" sheets at about $20. Cdn per sheet. It has really been worth it though as we don't have to worry about leaving the door to the balcony open and it is a good place to let them play outside their cage when we are doing sometihng we don't want them to get into. Also someone mentioned litter being thrown from the cage Natasha will do this when their is too much litter in the box and sometimes in a new box as well. To protect our carpet underneath the cage we first used a lighting panel but found this cracked too easily, another choice could be plexi-glass but what we our currently using which is working really well is a drop cloth(heavy plastic) cut just a little bigger than the cage bottom. They sometimes will crawl under this but they haven't done this in a while so I guess the novelty has worn off. David, Jennie and the ferrets Tara and Natasha [Posted in FML issue 1678]