I was wrong in thinking they'd leave my plants alone for ever. Today I brought home my 70 cm tall pachira and put it on the table in the living room. Late in the evening, I found it overturned, all the soil on the table and the floor and several of the roots severed.

It may make it; I've had plants survive worse treatments before. But this is really irritating, as I'd left it with my parents for this long so I wouldn't have to transport it in the cold and risk it for that reason!

Well, I've got too many plants anyway, and why not let my ferrets do the weeding, instead of just see which ones are hardiest to my treatment? (At the moment, I've got 23, but when the first ferret came to live with me, I had more than 60. The cacti and succelents with thorns were the first to go, for security reasons.)