Its been a while since I've had the time to post anything. I have a couple of recent behavior examples that indicate a higher intelligence at work! "Baby" was running around in her usual mad fashion during "out time" when she started to back into the 45 degree corner beside the cabinet. My wife spotted this immediately and shouted "Baby, no". The response was significant. The culprit looked up and across the room, left the corner without making a deposit, and immediately backed into the other 45 degree corner on the opposite side of the cabinet. My wife very loudly shouted "No!" and made movement to get up from her chair. Baby immediately left that corner, no deposit, scuttled over to the cage, climbed in the litter box and then returned to playing with the rest of them. Three minutes later she was missing from view and we found her making a deposit behind the sofa! Every morning I let all four out for morning excercise while I have breakfast. (No longer five - we lost Lester to post operative complications following an adrenal tumor that grew through the vena cava.) Anyway, everybody will play happily and totally ignore things like TV Guides, phones, TV remotes, etc. They run and they climb over them but never seem to take any of these things. However, should you leave the room to do something that ties you up for more than three minutes all hell seems to break loose. You return to shredded magazines and stolen telephones and remotes. I can go into another room to get get something and return quickly and they are all still where I left them. However, if I go to my study and turn on the computer to prepare for work (it takes a few minutes to boot) they seem to know I'm gone for long enough that they can wreak havoc. I have even noticed that I can replace all the stolen and shredded items and they will not attempt to regain posession as long as I'm in the room. Leave the room and they are at it again! A side note on wet ferrets, and I'm certainly not advocating the kind of behavior's recently reported. We have a closed deck that they play on in the snow. Recently we opened the back door when it was raining. Two of them seemed to love it although they didn't stay out long once they realized they were soaked. (We had to dry them off with a towel.) However, the idea of raindrops bouncing off the deck had Tyranoweasel going crazy for five minutes. [Posted in FML issue 2456]