Dear Ferret Folks-

Over the years I have heard a few ferrets bark, always when they were
startled, not in response to a dog. If you sneak up on Puma when she
is sleepy and not paying attention, she might give a single "bark" of
surprise and whirl around to look at you. I know that she hears just
fine. We call her with one of two rubber squeakies. She will come at
the sound of either, Ping will generally only come for the higher
pitched of the two. He ignores the lower pitched one that works just
fine with Puma.

But it's not just ferrets that bark...oh, no.

Years ago my little sister went downstairs in the middle of the night
for a call of nature, the upstairs bathroom wasn't working for some
reason at the time. She flipped on the downstairs reading room light
and there she saw a skunk, standing right smack in the middle of my
Mother's good wool Persian carpet. A beautiful, fat, ebony and whipped
cream white skunk. My sister froze in horror and so did the skunk, but
then it let out a loud single bark, and ran beneath a bookcase. My
sister took the back way to my mother's bedroom and explained to my
very sleepy mother that there was a SKUNK in the house! What to do?

My mother said that it had almost certainly come in through the cat
flap in the reading room wall. Leave the side door near the cat flap
wide open to the night, and turn off the lights. Screw the heat bill.
The skunk would leave on its own. Thankfully, it did,without engaging
either of our two elderly house cats.

My sister had noted before that night that there were strange muddy
prints on the kitchen floor around the cat's water and food dishes. At
the time, she and my mother theorized that a raccoon must be coming in
through the cat flap at night.

Nope.

Alexandra in MA

PS It never returned...not that we *know* of. If it did it wiped its
feet first.

[Posted in FML 5777]