With all this talk of being prepared for emergencies, I had a prefect example last night. Living in the Virgin Islands, I basically always keep an emergence kit, prepared for long-term hurricane emergences, power outages etc. Well last night in the middle of feeding the kids their duck soup, out go the lights - and it is pitch black - and I have 6 ferrets sitting on top of the large dog carrier eating. Now the carrier is surrounded by other carriers and tubes and milk crates and lots of fun stuff for the boys, so I am not worried about them falling off, but the little girls could fall off! Immediately BJ screams blood murder and flys into a tube, of course I feel the food splattering through the air and I hear all the bowls clinking together with JJ going under the comforter. And I am totally blind. I started calling for Zory to find the flash light and come help. Well she goes and feels where the flash lights are suppose to be and they weren't there. I ended up picking up both the little girls who were not happy about having their food taken away and being carried around. I finally found my cellular phone and was able to use the small blinking light on the phone to find the flash lights. The maid had moved them to a different place in the kitchen. All we could think about was what if it had been fire, we wouldn't have had the 5 to 10 minutes it took us find the flash lights. We are now putting flash lights in various draws and other places we know they won't get moved from (of course you always have to put them back!). Of course all ended well, except, I had a mess to clean up - but if it had been an emergence it could have been a different story. As for screaming ferrets, as you noticed above BJ screamed. BJ loves to scream, he's deaf, but he talks. He will be walking down the hall and suddenly jump up in the air, scream, and run and hide as if a monster was after him. I just think he has an over active imagination. He, of course, is my ferret that won't come out until late in the afternoon. He has morning-a-phobia. So to the owner with the screamer, she may just like to pretend monsters are chasing her like BJ does (or maybe there really are invisible monsters that only they can see!!!!). Amy and her 6 fur snakes. [Posted in FML issue 2818]