Recently was given one of those rawhide dog "Chewbones." Got to wondering just what I could do to with this hard thing that the ferts ignored. So soaked it in a pail of water for two days and was able to unwind it (untied the end knots). Got a number of rawhide sheets. Cut them up into strips about 1-inch by 4-inches with a very sharp! pair of heavy scissors. Since I'd saved the chicken/salmon juice & grease from the 20 lbs of chicken and salmon scraps I'd cooked to go into the ferret soup (LUMPS) I got the idea of stewing these rawhide strips in the chicken/salmon drippings. Put them hot on a couple layers of paper towels to let them air dry and then gave them to the floor full of ferrets. My-o-my, talk about tugs-of war. The little ferts just went bonkers and tried to run of to their hidey holes and secret places with their competitors running shoulder/shoulder in all directions, their teeth clamped on to whatever part of the chicken/salmon flavored rawhide strips they could latch on to. They reminded me of short, short legged bulldogs. They hunker down, nose to nose, their teeth clamped tightly on the softened, flavored rawhide strips, and grunt, snort, and bark, all the while trying to back up and away from the other fert of like mind who's pulling the other way just as hard as he can. After a couple of days, the pieces I've recovered showed that many of the corners had been pulverized and ripped into streamers of rawhide with some of the corners missing. I've squeezed the cold poop between my fingers and palm of my hand looking for chunks of rawhide and have found a few small pieces that are very soft and slimy. So apparently they're going through OK. So next time someone asks you what's new, you can tell them not to shake hands with Lipinski. Gad, did you see his fingernails ? Edward Lipinski, One of the Wests Foremost Ferret Feces Feeler/squeezers. ( Domestic ferret only, not the "domesticated" ferret, since by definition, the only "domesticated" ferret is a dead ferret - and it doesn't poop. ) PS. Squishing poop between my fingers and rubbing my palm to feel for solid objects in my own poop some few years ago has sort of hardened me to doing this with ferret poop when the need arises. You see, two years ago in the dentist's chair when the dental tech was scraping the plaque from around the base of one of my molars, she accidentally popped off one of my gold crowns ($450.00) and before I knew what had happened, I'd swallowed it. Six days later while on a huckleberry picking trip up in the Cascades I recovered the crown from my beautifully spiraled coil of warm, steaming -you know what- and carefully rubbed it into the fir-needled ground cover until it was somewhat cleaner and stuffed it into my stocking for safe-keeping until we got home with our couple of gallons of huckleberries. My dentist recemented the crown back on some days later after it had made its "round trip." We were both rather amazed that the trip had taken six days. Until I found it on that sixth day, I thought it had gotten by me and was sorely disappointed. As they say, persistance usually pays off. EL [Posted in FML issue 2582]