Dear Ferret folks-

A name is everything. The best names I ever gave weasels were the names
that they showed me themselves. That would be "No" and "Don't", two
ladies who were dumped namelessly when one of them became ill. Well, of
course they were ill. They lived in a wire rabbit cage and ate nothing
but cheap cat food. I didn't know it at the time, but they were also
much older than the owners claimed. No only lived about a week, we
were newbies and had no idea how ill she was. Don't had a few highly
satisfactory years with us, years that got me forever hooked on
ferrets.

What could be more elementary?

"NO! Get off of that!"
"Don't for godsake DO that again!" 

No and Don't. 

There is a ferret on this list named BART! And every time I see that
written I laugh, because it tells me so much about life with BART! What
a wonderful name. "Pester" has got to be another one of my favourites.
And "Epimethius" because it is such a lofty, literate name for a
weasel. I understand that there is a "Ping is She" out there, and that
does my heart good.

Well, people have been asking me when I was going to get a friend for
Todd. The answer was "once Allis Chompers the dog had some health
issues resolved." It turned out that Allis was a lot sicker than we
thought. The old leg injury was not the whole story. And I think her
illness had a lot to do with what happened to my sweet Ping is He. Many
thanks to the TenderHeart Veterinary Clinic in Gradner, Ma. Allis has a
new lease on life. She is much more "herself" again, although she will
never be trusted with a ferret as she was formerly. Now time out for
ferrets to play is supervised time for Allis. That's just the way it
is. (Note to people who live in *swamps*, you need a higher dose of
heart worm preventive than you might imagine. My whole neighbourhood
has this problem.)

So now we have a friend for Todd. He is a long bodied albino, and his
name is revealed to me as Hebert. Hebert is a very familiar name to
children in my part of Massachusetts because of the Hebert candy
company. They actually invented and introduced the recipe for the very
first white chocolate. They still make it today, and it is AWESOME! As
we say in Worcester County.

And so is Hebert, although he is the dumbest, *the* dumbest ferret
that I have ever met. He likes to climb things. But he can't figure
out down. The first night he was here he climbed up into the four inch
black landscape tubing that is attached to the cage. It goes up to the
ceiling, punches through the wall, and runs for about twenty five feet
along the living room ceiling. Well, he couldn't figure out how to get
down. He got mightily scared and panicked. I finally had to pry the
mesh end-cap off of the tube to get him out. He doesn't go up there,
anymore. He climbs out of a simple chair as if he were negotiating the
steepest face of Everest.

He also bites feet. Bare feet. He finds them irresistible, so I'm
apparently in socks for years to come. He swarms around any foot flesh
left exposed by shoes, licks, sniffs, and finally bites. Putting him in
time out does not help. He went after my sister's feet and she gently
tossed him onto the sofa half a dozen times, finally saying "This
ferret is so dumb he should have been sold with a wooden mallet to whap
him on the head with." That sounds terrible, but if you were subject to
one of his foot fetish sessions, you'd be looking for the mallet after
a few minutes.

Fortunately, he and Todd get along very well. Their play rocks the
house half off of its foundations.

"WHUMP! Patter-patter-patter BANG! Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa WHAM!
CRASH!" I have never heard such noise, but then again I never had two
young males before.

And land a Goshen, he pretty much poops in the cage, as does Todd.
Then he helps Todd destroy the house.

Any advice for a ferret with a foot fetish? Buy him his own pair of
six inch stilletos to chew and a Gerorge Michaels poster?

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 6132]