Well, the herd accomplished another near-heart-attack for me this weekend. Since I'm in a one-bedroom apartment with a bunch of mountain biking gear in the bike shop, I mean living room, the Herd has to be contained in the kitchen and the bathroom when they have ferret freedom. So on Saturday, I put the three boys in the kitchen and the two girls in the bathroom, and went about my business doing laundry & such. About 1/2 hour later, I wandered over to the kitchen to check on the boys because they seemed very quiet. My heart leapt into my throat as I realized the BROILER on the oven was OPEN! I jumped the two feet in the air to clear the door barrier and called out "Ferrets! Chitlins! Where are my ferrets?!" Slinky & Kyle popped out from under the pantry shelves and Gizmo crawled out of his sweatshirt in the corner. I was so relieved! They all looked at me like "Ok, now why did you wake us up?" So a few hours later, when it was time for bed, I put Slinky & Gizmo in the cage and picked up Kyle to cuddle him (he's a cuddler when he wants to be). Well I noticed something wrong with his whiskers. Upon closer inspection I noticed that they were BURNED OFF! He has only stubs on the right side of his face and a few burned short on the left side. So I grabbed up Gizmo & inspected him and he was OK (Giz is the smart one anyway). But when I looked at Slinky, he had a few burned off too, though not as bad as Kyle. I checked all paw pads and stuff and found no other damage luckily. AAAAH! We almost had broiled ferret for dinner! The only conclusion I could come up with, because the tray of the broiler was cool (thankfully I hadn't turned the oven on for dinner yet), was that they located the pilot and got a little too close. Sigh... Since we don't use the broiler (heck we hardly use the oven :-)) I grabbed some duct tape and taped it closed so the ferts can't get in there anymore. And I thought the kitchen was ferret proof. Um, yeah, right. === Aileen & the herd Slinky, Gizmo, Kyle, Noel, & Sandy "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." [Posted in FML issue 2726]