Jeff,
    We made a sand box for our ferrets, since they loved to dig in my plants
so much.  We put paneling around two sides of their sand box and a ferret
swimming pool on the other side (baking pan with water).  We bought some
cleaned "play sand" from Lowes.  They sell it in 50 lb bags.  Our ferrets
definitely play in it more than occasionally.  Each day they redesign the
sand in their box.  The problem is that one of Figit isn't quite litter
trained yet and she sometimes gets confused and thinks well, it's close
enough to litter for me.  We had to cut another piece of paneling for a top
when we're not around.  The walls of this box are quite high, but we left
the one side open for them to get in and out.  They have to climb up some
"stairs" to get into their box.  Many times they have dug all of the sand
from the bottom of one side so that they can push it out of the open side
onto the floor.  We have some towels down and it's not a big deal to clean
up.  The stairs help with keeping the sand in the rest of the room down and
the towels around the edges (like a walk way ) make it even better.  Of
course, inevitably some sand gets on the carpet, but frequent vacuums solve
that problem.  We also put some water in the sand (just a little) because it
was so clean and dry and dusty.
    One more suggestion, from living in an apartment, I would consider
putting your ferret in a room or somehow blocking sections of the apartment
off.  Even though our landlords have always known we have pets, we couldn't
always be there and on several occasions, they came into our apartment for
"maintenance" of some kind.  If our ferrets had not been confined to a room
and a sign on the door in big bold letters DO NOT ENTER, biting dog in room.
I am afraid our fuzzies may have escaped.  One day, I had to skip class
because a friend who happened to live a couple of doors down told me there
was a pest control person going down our side of the building spraying in
all apartments because someone complained about roaches.  This was totally
unplanned and unannounced.  I took Cheevie back to class with me (she
enjoyed the computer lab best), and when I returned that evening at my
normal time, there was a letter on the table saying our apartment had been
sprayed for bugs.  I hate to think what would have happened to Cheevie if my
friend hadn't caught me when she did.
 
Sedeca, John
Cheevie & Figit
[Posted in FML issue 1272]