One of my sisters is a veterinarian. JUST this afternoon, she came in with her kids on the airplane, in the process of moving cross country to settle down in Klamath Falls. (Her husband had driven out with a big truck of stuff a few weeks previously.) Anyway...she was very interested to find out that I have adopted some ferrets, as she's had all the school larning on them but has never had one for a patient. She and I spent quite a while talking about them and I let her get several good whiffs of a harness I'd brought along. (She is the reason I asked about allergies; she has a lot of allergies and has to wear a mask when she treats hamsters. The last time she didn't, she wound up in the E.R.!) This afternoon I watched my copy of the movie "The Secret Garden" with her and her two young children. My other sister is going to drive them down to Klamath Falls tomorrow, and we were all in "vege" mode. So at one point I get up to go find a bandaid for the 4-year-old (she kept ripping them off and wanting another) when all of the sudden, shouts erupt from the TV room. "Ferret! Ferret! Auntie Megan, there's a ferret!" I stumbled across a few suitcases in my haste, but was too late, so they rewound it for me. And sure enough!!! "It *IS* a ferret!!!" I exclaimed, as a tiny light-colored wedge-shaped, adorable face with an unmistakable mask poked into view from the upper-righthand corner of the screen, in a scene where Dicken (the younger brother of Martha) is showing Mary how to plant some seeds. It's a closeup of the opened soil, focussing on the seeds dropping down, or some such...when suddenly: Peek Peek *Vanish!* It was adorable. It was a very lightcolored animal, and the top of its head was NOT darker, that I saw, though it was only visible for a few moments and none of the body could be seen. It looked like a creamy-colored critter with a delicately darker V-shaped mask and dark eyes. I have no idea what a wild polecat looks like...but I assume it must have been a silver, pale cinnamon, or DEW patterned ferret, maybe? Anyway, very cute. I was very amused to have a ferret show up in the film, after my sister and I'd spent so much time discussing them an hour or two earlier. The kids thought it was cool, too; they'd met ferrets before. Before the movie, the 4yo insisted on buckling the ferret harness around her wrist and her brother was leading her around on the leash and calling her "Sparkles" hile she made assorted animal noises. Mostly barks, not dooks, but... still. :-) - Megan -- Megan O'Shaughnessy DC, and Grover and Onyx! http://www.teleport.com/~megan/ [Posted in FML issue 2436]