Actually, I believe their wild relatives are formally considered to be crespuscular (Didn't check spelling and it's a word that often gets me.) -- most active at the low-light periods such as dawn and dusk, rather than noctural. It one of the three most common patterns of activity. I think people without a bio background don't even recognize that this option exists so folks tend to write that they are nocturnal, or they see one of the older references on the relatives which were sometimes based more on conjecture than study and go from there. Given how short their digestive tract is a person does still have to expect them to get up to use the facilities or to eat and drink during the dark of night so there will be noise from that even when they change to a more human pattern. If the non-sleeper goes to ear-plugs to get through the night put them someplace safe and unreachable when ferrets are out or can get out; several FML ferrets have died of blockages from them. Having to postpone Scooter's corrective hand surgery due to a work conflict, but diligently soaking and removing the scab has it down again to normal (for an area with a protruding bone from an old injury and subsequent tissue retraction) and he doesn't seem to mind at all. Hope can do it early next week since that timing is better than waiting, and a June week's impossible chunk is upcoming -- have to allow for two weeks of recovery for him before that or do it after, but have to know about some meetings first. Ah, life... ;-) Thinning hair and thinning, wrinkling skin make me think of adrenal neoplasias or advanced age; I'd get to vet who knows ferrets if I were you to find out and learn your options. The skin changes happen after it's been going a while, as do pear shaped bodies from our experience as long-time owners. See the vet to be safe. BTW, we get fur loss and new coats from seasonal changes twice a year here. Jen wrote: >Which, well, is it so awful? Posing nude for photographs. Geez. I've >done that, only in the name of art, not magazine sales... anyone want to >flame me for it? You, too? I did over a quarter century ago, and it sure didn't ruin me (nor did it preserve my figure, or prevent scowl lines and double chins), even though a few of the photos wound up in an art gallery so they weren't exactly private (black and white with high contrast, very artsy and I don't even have copies of the best ones to prove that once I looked passable -- sigh). How many hundreds of ferrets and their owners here on the FML have I helped over the many years? How many of you have become my friends? Did I become a horrid, horrid person? Tell the kids that it's a magazine their dad/mom and you don't like because you don't think women are as respected there as they should be, and if they ask add that a few women have now and then found it helped them find a later career but many more try it who aren't helped that way. that should be safe enough. Attitudes toward flesh vary from person to person and culture and culture. To me nudity isn't a big deal; to Steve (who does like Playboys which we get) it is personally a difficulty so he even puts on a bathrobe to go from bed to bathroom. We've been happily together for 20 years and married for 19 later this month (Yes, he even loves me just as much as a misshapen old fart, even when I do take a while between shower and closet. :-O, ;-P, :-). I love him just as much with his mystery body, too, though every once in while I insist on doing a leg, arm, neck, chest, back, and belly mole check since he did yard work for college money as a teen -- and he does blush even for that. He's very modest.) Tolerance of differences goes a long way toward making everyone happy. Sukie [Posted in FML issue 2682]