Dear Ferret Folks-

The subject came up earlier this winter, woodstove safety with ferrets.
We have not had any trouble until just this week, when two things
happened at the same time. One, it got warm, and the stove was running
at banked ashes temp. during the day, about three hundred degrees,
according to its thermometer.The ferrets have consistently avoided the
woodstove all winter, but it has been running at a higher temp. We have
seen them come up near it, stop, get a worried look on their face and
veer away. They do not like messing with fire. They have shown no
interest in 'exploring' the woodstove all winter. Two, we had a warning
for a late season, major dump of snow coming in, and my husband laid in
a very large pile of wood.

Now...here is how that looked to Ping is He, who is our climber and
leaper.

To the left of the woodstove, a built in cabinet standing about three
feet high, separated from the woodstove by about two feet. The top of
the woodstove, a flat surface, no longer brutally hot as it has been
all winter, conveniently placed at the same level as the top of that
cabinet. To the right of the woodstove, a pile of stacked cordwood that
was unusually high because of the storm. In fact, the top of the pile
was almost exactly the same height as the top of the woodstove, and the
top of the cabinet. He climbed the woodpile, and to his eyes, all he
had to do was take a "shortcut" across the top of the woodstove to get
to the top of the cabinet. He *likes* finding new ways to leap from
point A to point B, and he had certainly never gone this way before.
So he jumped.

My husband was home, I was not. He was drowsing on the sofa about a
dozen feet away from all this, which began silently. Then Ping landed
on the woodstove and it hurt, and he was scared, and he did not know
what to do, so he ran back and forth on top of the woodstove, screaming
blue murder and terror. My husband went airborne and ran for him, but
by then Ping had the good sense to jump *off* onto the floor. My
husband scooped him up and ran to the bathroom (about a four second
flat out run) and held the struggling Ping on his side on the bottom of
the tub right under the spigot, and blasted his feet with cold water.
In order to blast all four feet, it pretty much meant blasting all of
Ping with our ice-cold well water while Ping desperately tried to get
away, and who can blame him?

Nobody enjoyed this, but I believe it prevented some serious injury to
Ping's feet. My husband's arm and hand holding Ping under the ice cold
water was scratched to bits. Miraculously, Ping was not badly injured.
I am told he walked a little gingerly for an hour or two, but by the
time I got home and looked at him he made no attempt to try to protect
his feet, and his toes and pads looked completely normal. I could not
tell that anything had happened, and would never have known, except
that Ping was damp when I pulled him from his sleeping spot.

I am not thrilled that this happened on my ferret mommy watch, but it
did, and I wanted to tell other woodstove owners about it. I think
it is a really bad idea to say, have two piles of cordwood of equal
heights to either sides of your woodstove, especially if the tops of
the piles are about the same height as the top of your woodstove. I
think it is also important to note that ferrets who have always ignored
and avoided your woodstove all winter while it has been running at a
high temperature might well feel emboldened now that spring is here.
From two feet away as he was, I am sure the woodstove only felt toasty
warm, and not threatening. My husband has very calloused hands, and he
said at the time he was curious, and he was able to press his hands
palm down on the top of the woodstove for a second or two. But that
is all. Walking on it would have been a very different matter. And
obviously, a terrified ferret does not necessarily have to brains to
*jump off* at the first sign of trouble.

I do not have all the answers here, but I wanted to let people know
what I have seen.

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 5579]