Angi --
 
        My youngest, Tribble, *loves* to climb.  I am in a similar living
situation (i.e. vet med fraternity house room), and I too have closets (with
no doors) and shelves full of stuff.  No amount of consistent
scruffing/screaming/smacking seems to work.  She absolutely *insists* she
*must* be at the highest point possible, and it is especially rewarding for
her if she can manage to tear something up (i.e. steal insoles from my winter
boots) or knock something down (lucky for me my camera comes in a very cushy
bag!).  She particularly enjoys getting up there and digging at something
until the noise drives me absolutely out of my mind and then stopping as soon
as I get up to find her so that I can't figure out where she is without
tearing the whole closet apart.  This is *particularly* amusing for her when
I'm studying for a major exam.  And when I do find her she looks at me with
these big surprised eyes as if to say, `Who, me?'  She is *definitely* my
trouble maker.  Anyway, my suggestion is to simply remove anything that might
be appetizing (latex, styrofoam, leather) from reach if possible, and
anything breakable if it's valuable to you, and then give up.  The more you
try to get her not to climb the more trouble she's apt to cause trying to do
it.  This is the law of ferret dynamics.  It makes you feel like they're the
boss sometimes, but hey, who are we kidding, anyway? ;)  Good luck!
 
Whoever sent the message about the ferret aerobics -- that was hysterical!
Thanks for the laugh!
 
                                               Laura
 
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Laura L'Heureux, Trella, and Tribble, too
U. of Illinois Vet Med Class of 96          `Have you hugged your ferret
[log in to unmask]            today?'
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[Laura?  Can you get your mailer to stop appending ~70 blank lines to
every one of your messages?]
 
[Posted in FML issue 0646]