Mark you have my deepest sympathy on the passing of Cherry.  Do not blame
yourself.  Ferrets will spend half of their lives trying to find a way
to get themselves killed.  They are always looking for new and improved
ways to commit "Ferret suicide." And yes they seem wait for the weekend
or after hours to do so.  I remember reading that the late ferret expert
Wendy Winsted lost her ferret McGuinn to ferret suicide.  Wendy came home
to find that McGuinn had squeezed between the mattress and box spring of
her bed and had successfully managed to smother herself.  So you see it
can happen to even the best of us.  We do everything we can to prevent
ferret suicide but some ferrets are more successful at it then others.
Accidents happen.  I worry about my ferrets being stepped on all the
time.  My husband clomps around the house in heavy work boots and my
son is always running or skating though with his Heelys on.  Add two
ferrets with the combined speed of greased lighting and as you can
imagine it all makes me nervous.  I put bell collars on them and this
has helped tremendously to keep track of them when they are loose.  They
haven't even had their toes stepped on since they started to wear them.
I highly recommend bell collars with an ID tag for 3 reasons:
 
1) The obvious, it's a great locator.
2) If your ferret ever gets out, you can be called and have it returned
   to you.
3) It instantly identifies the animal as someone's pet.
 
While the latter may not be so important in other states, here in
California most people don't know what a ferret is and their first
response to a strange looking animal war dancing at them could be,
"It's wild, it's rabid, kill it now; ask questions later."
 
OK for those of you who are revving up to tell me how dangerous a collar
is; I know!  Any ferret can and will gladly commit ferret suicide by
hanging itself in the cage the first chance it gets.  (Provided it's on
the weekend or in the middle of the night of course.) I do suicide
prevention by removing the collars when they are in the cage.  But what
about when they are out you ask?  Superpetusa.com makes a colorful
stretchy E-Z on/off comfort collar for ferrets.  This collar has already
proven itself with me.  Awhile back I went out my front screen door to my
garage to do laundry.  I knew the ferrets were loose in the house and I
mentally recorded the screen door slam shut.  What I didn't know was that
it didn't latch like it always had before and as I was walking back a few
minuets later I happened to hear the bell ringing outside.  Looking off
to the side of my house 10 feet away, was my ferret happily exploring.
It was getting pretty dark at that time and she blended perfectly into
the environment.  If it hadn't been for the bell, I would have never even
known she was there.  It would have been at least an hour or so before
she would have been missed.  Mark thank you for sharing and if just one
ferret is now saved by wearing a bell collar, than your Cherry didn't
die in vain.
 
Pam
[Posted in FML issue 4635]