Hello,
Has my Hubby and I have come to find out nothing is ever Ferret safe.  Ever
since we got our first Ferret we have always know that they do like to get
into stuff.  So, we gave our Ferrets their own room!  Which we thought was
Ferret safe.  No exposed wires, no holes that we could see, nothings that
could fall over on them.  Just a Futon, end table, their cage and toys.
Well, Saturday my Hubby went out on to the deck and saw this dove flying
out of the grass for it's life!  Then our Little girl Ferret in hot pursuit
after it!  He yelled, YOSHI!.  Shocked of course!  She ran under the deck
but then came back out, realizing that it's Daddy.  He picked her up
brought her inside yelling for me.  We ran to the Ferret room to see if
the two Boys were still in there.  They were thank goodness!  Arnold being
spunky probably would have run from us.  Which he LOVES to do.  His way of
being playful!  Harley being deaf , well, that pretty much explains our
fear of him being outside unattended.  We, figured that Yoshi had pushed
out, or ate a hole in the screen.  That wasn't the case.  We then saw a
hole in the floor between the futon and their cage.  Harley, and we are
pretty sure it was him because he had carpet foam stuck to his nails.  Dug
through the carpet where there was a whole in the floor underneath leading
to under the house.  Big enough for Yoshi but not for the boys.  Needless
to say, we fixed the hole and search the floor for anymore holes!  Even the
closet incase they somehow get into it.  We gave them lots of love,
thankful that they weren't lost and locked them up in their cage for the
rest of the evening.
 
The next day I went in there in the morning before we had to go somewhere
and let them out and played with them.  We noticed Yoshi was jumping around
as if something was biting her.  I thought oh no FLEAS!  I looked her over
and no fleas but found a big tick.  So we go it off of her in one piece.  I
also noticed tiny little dirty freckle spots all over her.  I figured I'd
give her a bath later.  I then locked them up and got ready to leave when
my hubby got a phone call.  I went back into the room, thinking I would
check her over one more time.  I found another tick.  I then realized she
was covered head to toe in ticks.  That's what all of those tiny brown
spots were!  The boys had them too but not as bad.  Later in the day I
first started working on Harley, gave him a bath in a tick shampoo.  Then
tried picking off some of the ticks.  Well it was impossible to get through
the hair to get to the tiny ticks.  So, I ended up shaving him in the areas
where I saw the ticks.  As I'm shaving I'm realizing that there is more
then I realized.  By this time Harley is almost completely hairless.  I
feel horrible for doing that but there was no way to get to them.  As I'm
pulling of the ticks I realized that, they didn't even look like they were
close to being dead.  So finally after trying and trying to get them off we
ended up taking them to the vet at 10 pm.  They even tried getting the
ticks off but there are just too many.  The Vet guesses that there is about
300 baby ticks on JUST Yoshi!  and maybe about 100 each on the boys.  Well,
what I'm trying to get at is.  PLease!!!  Especially if you have a old
house like me.  Pull the carpet up and look to see if there are any holes
in the floor in your Ferrets room or where ever they might play.  This
could have ended up with a worse ending then it did.  I've got three itchy
babies from the bath the vet gave them and one now hairless, but seems to
like being that way.  WAKE UP CALL for me and my Hubby.
 
Dooks,
Toni
Harley, (now a.k.a. Mr Bigglesworth. You'll know what I mean if you've ever
seen Austin Powers) Yoshi and Arnold
 
Hugs, to the people with lost and sick fuzzies.
[Posted in FML issue 3537]