Hi Jill,
 
We're pretty sure all three of our ferrets are flea-free, but all of
them will suddenly wake up and scratch themselves so vigorously that
they fall out of bed and thump onto the floor, without missing a beat.
It's pretty hilarious to watch.
 
 
They'll also be rocketing across a room, then just suddenly flop over
and scratch madly, maybe once with a leg and then whip around and bite
from both sides, then get back up and resume rocketing.  I'd say this
happens in the tens of times per day.
 
All our ferrets get Purina Ferret Chow or Science Diet Kitten, plus
Ferretone and the occasional additional foods that they each especially
like (broccoli, m&m's, dried fruit, bean burrito, etc.), and their
coats are all beautiful, so I don't think that's our problem either.
Recently, they've only been bathed every several weeks, although
bathing them every other day like we used to doesn't seem to make any
difference.
 
We've been told by a (in our opinion very knowledgeable) ferret shelter
operator and breeder that ferrets are just itchy little animals.  On
the other hand, a lot of his ferrets have fleas.
 
Anyway, I think we either both have a bunch of schizo ferrets or this
is pretty normal behavior.
 
Ed, and Fang, Flash, and Beauty (not our real names, of course!)
 
[Posted in FML issue 0622]