Greetings FMLers--
 
We have an interesting problem that I'm hoping someone can help shed some
light on for us:
 
We thought that we had it rough when we had to clear the play area of
all-things-cotton because our deaf ferret, Moonshine, was known to eat
towels for breakfast and socks for lunch (human fingers and toes for
dessert, but that's another story).  She can still smell a towel from a
mile away, and forget it if you leave your smelly, dirty, cage-cleaning
towel on the floor for a millisecond, for Moonshine will find it and you
will be administering laxatone for weeks and never see the towel again!!
 
But now we have a new challenge, and one that we are finding tougher to
overcome: our 3-month old weasel, Penny, has taken a liking, a strong
liking--I'd call it an addiction at this point--to paper.  Paper of any
kind--books are her favorite, but she'll also chew on cardboard and
telephone bills, we've found.  She's like a billy goat!  We're avid readers
and have books and bookcases galore and I'm constantly finding Penny in
the bookcase munching on dust jackets from hardcover books (which we have
removed from the bottom shelf...lucky she has her older and wiser cagemate
to show her how to scale the bookshelf, or she'd go hungry).
 
Is this ferret missing something in her diet that is making her crave
paper?!  Or is she just nuts?  Towels, we can keep track of and not leave
lying around.  But there is paper everywhere, as we've found...the tag
from your bed comforter, tags on pillows, letters, bills, BOOKS...
 
Any assistance and/or advice that anyone has would be greatly appreciated.
I have never, in my five years of being around ferrets, seen anything like
this (of course, Moonshine's towel fetish was new to us, too).  Has anyone
out there ever experienced an insatiable literary ferret?
 
Many thanks in advance,
 
Tamara, Jeff, and the gang (Ginger, Moonshine, Penny, and Jack)
[Posted in FML issue 3168]