Ok, so I finally found a few free moments to go over the names of our fuzz butts and how we came to be owned by them. This may be a little long, but I thought I'd share anyway! Enjoy! Tavi (sable) short for Rikki Tikki Tavi, it was my favorite movie as a child and I had already named my pet raccoon Rikki when I was a kid so Tavi it was. She is the first ferret we've been owned by. We actually bought her at a yard sale! $25! We had been considering buying a ferret, had talked to the local rescue, checked out the pet stores, etc. Then one morning my mother-in-law called us to say that a family down the street from her was having a yard sale and they were selling there ferret along with some other pets (snakes, hamsters, guinea pigs, etc. a varitable zoo). Apparently the parents of the family were getting a divorce and neither of them wanted to deal with all the kids pets. The husband had wanted a ferret and the wife made a deal that he could have a ferret if she got a diamond. Thanks to the divorce she kept the diamond ring and he sold the ferret. We bought Tavi as soon as we held her, we ended up carrying her around the neighborhood for about an hour (more yard sales to check out), to make sure she was ok, and that it was really what we wanted to do. I'm glad we did! She's a sweet-heart! Gives kisses, likes to cuddle, loves to play. Some of her nick names include: sweat-pea and string bean. Tavi is approx. 5-6 years old, perhaps older. Akimbo (sable) is our second ferret. Picked him up to keep Tavi company when we're at work. He was a sad case at a poor pet store that's no longer in business (thank goodness!). We named him Akimbo because when you pick him up his hind legs stick out like a bow-legged cowboy. We couldn't come up with a good cowboy name so we decided on Akimbo, it means to stand with your hands on your hips, elbows out, it's kind of what his back legs look like with they stick out. He also gives kisses and likes to cuddle and play. He also likes to steal Tavi's toys and he used to try to eat them, till we figured out exactly what toys were Akimbo safe. This guy will lick your face untill he's down to the bone if you'd let him. One of these days I'm going to have to enter him in a kissing contest! He's much more muscular than Tavi so one of his nicknames is Brutus. We also call him Monkey-Boy because he likes to climb his cage. Akimbo is about 4 years old. Then we adopted two more sables Mickey and Minnie (already named when we got them) from a couple who had recently gotten a rotwieler. They decided that the BIG dog (more like HUGE DOG!) was more than enough to handle and that the ferrets weren't getting enough attention and would be in danger around the dog. So we took these two Marshall Farms guys in. They were not good specimens, VERY skinny, very long, very little muscles. I tried supplimenting their diet with vitamins, I tried a couple of different foods all in the attempt to get some muscles or atleast some weight on them with no avail. I even had a friend who worked for Marshall Farms and he couldn't believe they were from MF untill he checked the tatoos on their ears. At any rate, neither of them gave kisses but Mickey liked to curl up in my lap and go to sleep when I watched TV. Then just last winter, right before Christmas Mickey came down with some mystery virus. In less than a week he had lost all use of his hind legs, by the time we got him to the vet his whole body was stiff. We had to have him put down. The vet couldn't figure out what happened to him, she had never seen anything like it. The following week we went through the same problems with Minnie, resulting in putting her down as well. The vet, to this day, does not know what happened, she tested them for several things with no results. Tavi and Akimbo never picked up any of the symptoms from their cagemates. Augie (cinamon) is our latest adoptee (bringing our gang back to 3). We took him in a few months ago, he's about 1 year old now. He's huge! When we got him he had his winter coat and he was almost 2x the size of Akimbo. Now that he's got his spring/summer coat he doesn't look quite so imposing. This guy is a complete spaz! So one of his nicknames is Spaz, we also call him Psycho. He loves to romp and dance and play with Tavi and Akimbo and he also likes to chase the younger of our two cats around, nipping at his butt and tail (the cat turns around and chases him too -- this cat grew up around our ferrets, so sometimes he tries to follow them into their dryer hose toy and behind/under the entertainment center). He's the first ferret we've ever gotten before they were one year old or older so it's been alot of fun watching him grow. So that's our crew! [Posted in FML issue 2661]