hello everyone! Just thought I'd share a VERY interesting story with all of you. I work at an animal clinic and yesterday while I was working a lady called and said that she caught something in her kitchen on one of those sticky mouse traps (VERY CRUEL TRAPS). Well I told her to bring it in and we'd try to release it and if we couldn't we'd have to call Animal Control. (I have experience with removing animals from these traps because I used to work at a pet store where they used these to kill mice...well actually they don't kill mice, the mouse just gets stuck and either it starves to death after a few days or my bosses would drown them in the toilet. Well I used to free the mice and release them outside without my bosses knowing ;) All I had to do was use water or mineral oil to stop the glue from sticking to the mice and they just come off.) Well when these people came into the clinic I wasn't expecting the animal they caught in their kitchen to be a STOAT (ermine)!!! It's winter here so he was pure white with a black tip on his tail. He had the BIGGEST eyes I've ever seen which made him SO cute!! Well this poor little guy (he was a boy) was stuck flat on his stomach, including his head and the skin of his face was getting pulled SO tight his face was stretching!! I quickly put on some gloves because I didn't want to risk getting bitten and I had a girl get me some mineral oil. I quickly started at his back end freeing his tail then his legs. This poor little guy was SO frightened...he just kept screaming. I felt SO bad for him..his poor little heart was beating so fast!! I got nervous when I got to his head becuase he was trying to bite me. After I got him free I washed him off and dried him (with gloves on of course). I admired him for a LONG time...everyone I work with thought i was a wacko becuase I kept saying how cute he was. He was JUST like a ferret only SO TINY!! I wanted to take him home, but I realized that he's a wild animal and he deserves to be free. So the people who brought him in offered to release him outside their house so he would be close to home. I still think it's weird that these people had a stoat living in their house!! Thanks for listening to my story! -- Truly, Liz http://www.norlink.net/~state/liz.html [Posted in FML issue 1860]