Greetings... I've been an FMLer for a few months now and been a part of what I gather are regular debates on predatory-instinct, MF ferrets & associated problems, etc. One I haven't seen come up (and this may very well tell you how long I've been a subscriber) is the whole shavings issue (insert scary music here). I'm in the process of getting a local pet store to stop keeping ferrets in shavings. If I can get some actual paper studies that outline that it's bad, I think it'll happen, so anyone with some refs, I'd like to see em! I also know that there are a lot of different bedding materials out there. Cedar has gotten a lot of DON'T EVER USE THIS warning. Does this go for pine as well for the same reasons; what about Aspen bedding? Depending on the responses, I intend to write letters to companies that recommend unsafe beddings for use in ferret cages and cite references. I've done this a few times before to 'toy' companies that market rubber bouncy balls, soft foam cat balls, soft latex urchin-like balls, etc as ferret toys and gotten positive responses. Whether anything actually HAPPENED I have no way of knowing. As I said, I'm sure this issue has arisen before (and will arise again) so I apologize in advance for kicking off the next FML spam-battle. -Erin... [Moderator's note: A couple of years ago someone asked me if I could pull some of the better cedar shavings posts from past FMLs and forward them to her as she urgently needed them. The reason, I long ago forgot, but the collection is still there. There are some pretty good posts there -- I don't think the age of the compilation matters here. Anyhow, feel free to ask the server for CEDAR POSTS FERRET to receive all 700+ lines of it. Now THAT's a great place to start! BIG] [Posted in FML issue 2270]