While talking to Rose Smith on the phone the other day, she happened to mention that one of her Aussie kits hadn't been placed yet. I am waiting for my Aussie from a different breeder- no offense to Rose- I already have one of her breedings, but wanted to bring a different blood line from the West Coast out here for stud purposes. ANyway, we had been talking about babies, and how I had forgotten what it was like to have a baby in the house, and she says "Do you want to borrow Kiwi for a few weeks?" Some psychosis in that back of my head makes me say "YES!" So I went down to her house and picked him up. He is a beautiful 10 week old albino fluff ball. He immediately got along well with all of my other fuzzies. He hasn't met Mambo yet though. Mambo goes into quaratine in my bedroom anytime another animal comes in to the house, where he has to sleep on the waterbed- such a hard life! :-) As many of you know I work from home several days a week, and the ferret cages are in my office, which is an extension off of my kitchen. I stayed home yesterday, and observed the whole lot of them. Kiwi- the new baby didn't sleep all day! I finally had to close up the cage and lock him out in order for the others to catch a few zzz's. He kept pouncing on them all, trying to get them to play like a Tigger! Sad to say he is only here for a short time, but we'll enjoy him while we can. My Little Molly loves to have a playmate in the house, they were pouncing and wardancing for two hours straight last night. Well Kiwi brings our numbers up to nine! (For the time being anyway) We have 7 who are personal pets, another who is in limbo- he came in as a rescue, and a home had been found, but he has medical problems which needed to be taken care of and wasn't box trained. Now that we have worked with him and he is about ready to go, I don't have a home for him. With the overcrowding in some of the true shelters, I feel that it would be better to try and place a true "shelter ferret" from one of them and keep him here until the situation is better in the true shelters. And Kiwi makes nine. Does this put me in the collector catagory? :-) Nah.... If I began to truly collect, I would be served divorce papers. Now Ducky didn't mind the Kiwi idea- he loves the playful kits, and he knows that he isn't staying. But as he is so fond of saying- "I have reached my limit". I think he means his limit :-)! -Mrs. Duck (who is off to scoop poop) PS- One of the SIG's I belong to has a bunch of gardeners in the group, and they have been having trouble with moles and squirrels. One of them heard that ferret poops scattered in the garden keeps these pests away. I told them I would supply them all if they wanted. In the spring, I will get a list of all of the cities and states that they live in, and post it. If you are interested in donating poop to someone in your area, you can let me know! And Lord knows we all have plenty of that to go around! [Posted in FML issue 1767]