Marta wrote about her first-time date finding her purple undies in the ferret tent and asked if this kind of thing had happened to anyone else. Yes. When I first was divorced and living alone, my college-aged daughter gave me a box of condoms as a joke gift. Having no other immediate use for them, I filled them with water, tied ribbons around the tops, and let the ferrets play with them. The condoms became swiftly deflated, of course, so I gathered them all up and put them in the garbage. But it turned out that I hadn't actually gathered them ALL up. Months later I contacted a local minister upon the recommendation of a friend, since I was looking for a smallish divorcee-friendly church to join. The minister and his wife made an appointment to visit me at my apartment, and that evening I baked cookies and had everything spic and span, including the ferrets. Mr. and Mrs. Minister seemed to like the ferrets, so I let my Chief Ferret (the "best- behaved" one) out to run around the living room. While we humans were chatting about God, etc., my ferret made a brief excursion into my bedroom and returned dragging a deflated condom (with a kinky pink ribbon still attached) across the middle of the living room floor...I have no idea where he'd stashed it all that time. The minister and his wife didn't react visibly, but I went into a panic/asthma attack. They left shortly thereafter. Needless to say, I didn't pursue joining that particular church, and they didn't pursue me either. [Posted in FML issue 2445]