Yesterday Muldoone's person asked :
>Do ferrets groom their people?  I was lying on the bed and one of my
>little sprites went up in my shirt and started kissing my back.  How
>cute.  And then she started nipping.  Ow!  Lick, lick, lick, nip!  It
>was nothing aggressive and it didn't break the skin, but the pinch of
>her fangs didn't feel real good.  When I watched her it was evident
>that she was trying to groom me.
 
At the Ferret And Dove Sanctuary, over the last 8 years, we've usually
had several ferrets in any given group who will do this to, or for, us
and a rarer few who will flea-groom any human whatsoever.  We like to
say these ferrets are the "fixers", as in they're fixing what they think
ails us, whether or not we think so.  And a few, such as, currently,
Nala Bubble-Bubbles Ferret, are dedicated and thorough flea-groomers to
everyone and their brothers and cousins at any portions of skin she can
reach, you Will be thoroughly groomed and ferretly de-flea-ed.  This
serves us right for giving them flea baths and suchlike treatments.  We
ought to really be doing it "right" and licking and biting the fleas off
with our mouths, as far as the groomer-ferrets are concerned, so they
seem to actually redouble their efforts after the fleas are gone just
like a cleaning-freak will clean after someone else so that, to their
mind, it was "done right", even if that second grooming, or cleaning ,
was never necessary.  Being necessary or not is not the point!  It's
just gotta be done by a real de-flea-er who will do it "right"!  So I
guess you could look at it as an obsessive-compulsive care-taking by
your ferret.
[Posted in FML issue 4818]