Greetings to all!
 
My roomate and I are now the new, and first-time, owners
of a cutey little ferret, whom we have dubbed "Riesling."
She is a 6 week old female, sort of grey-coated, bought
from a local pet store, and with all the appropriate shots,
spay, descent, etc..  Before buying her we read the FAQ pretty
thorougly and scanned rec.arts.pets, so we had a pretty good
idea what was going on in the domain of ferrets (we've hit
FAQs for everything now from ferrets to shortwave radios. Useful
things, they :) ).  Technically, my roomate is the owner of
the ferret but we're both sharing in raising (?) it and I'm
the net-geek, so things will be from my perspective.
 
Also, let me preface my comments by noting that we have had
Riesling for a grand total of 3 days so far.  Both of us
have a fair amount of experience with raising and relating to
dogs, but nothing else, so a lot of how I comment on Riesling
in my mind is compared to my experience with dogs.
We have a very homey cage for Ries, with lots of soft, old
clothing for her to make beds out of, a balcony and a ramp,
and a comfy ol' hammock made of a pantleg from sweats.  She
seems to have taken to the cage rather well, and
has rearranged the clothes as she has seen fit to create
herself a lower level bedroom, and she uses the hammock fairly
often, when she wants to be especially cute.  So far, she
has exhibit two behaviors which I am rather pleased about
(as opposed to dogs). The first is her litter training. We didn't need
to. I don't know what experiences she had to prior to purchase,
but she has used her litter box from the first time until
present with no slips.  Even when she runs free she will return to
the cage and the litter box when she needs to. Amazing!
By the second day it was clear that she was not at all pleased with
the idea of remaining caged permanently, as she bit and scratched
at the cage incessently. We have since ferret-proofed the living
room and allowed her to run free, with no problems. In fact,
the second pleasant behavioral surprise was that we didn't need
to track her down to get her back in the cage, she just returned
there to go to sleep and we close the door.  Sounds good, so far, right?
Right. Well so now the two "problems." Perhaps I'm asking for too
much too soon.  The biggest problem is this -BITING. SHe bites!
It hurts!  We have tried being harsh with her, and she has gotten
a bit better about it, but it is still very difficult, and scary,
to try and pet or handle her for fear of a real bloodletter.
When she runs free we try to play with her, but she just ends
up hurting us so we lay off.  Furthermore, she has a thing for
feet. If you only have socks or are barefoot she will circle your
feet and bite your toes, which is very irritating!
 
We have an effective "NO", one that stops her from doing what she
is doing, but she'll do it again later. And if you try to flick her
nose of something she'll get pissed and try to bite you again.
I'm not trying to paint her as a completely hostile little Hitler,
she is not mean, per se, but she will get mad if you hit her when
she's biting you.  We have yet to find any treats that she will
eat - she likes her Science Diet kitten growth formula just fine,
but has rejected the human food we've tried for treats. So we're
wondering what advice, if any, more experience ferret-ers might
have for us, from "give it time" to "smack her hard" :),
but the biting is getting rather frustrating, and a real disincentive
to physically socialize with her. Keep in mind that I'm used
to dogs, which are often so placid you can kick them in the head
(not that I would!) and they'll just kiss you (at least the dogs
I've known). I'm not sure how ferrets normally behave.
Thanks for the info, I look forward to reading and watching
the collected ferret wisdom on the FML.
 
-Aaron
 
p.s. About that NH Health Dept. thing - I never cease to
be amazed at how much and how often misinformation and
skewed information is thrust upon the public. In fact,
watch the nightly news any given night. Oh, hey, in fact
there's a new scandal if you hadn't heard. On PrimeTime Live
last night they tried to tell us that supermarket food
was being shortweighted in some big scam, pointing out
that 150,000 out of 3 million packages came up shortweighted
by 1-2 cents. Revolution! Just another use of illusory numbers on
the numbed minds of the public.
 
[Posted in FML issue 0772]