Marie Schatz was interested in the differences between female/male fuzzies
and variations in temperments among 'big' ferret families.  I don't know if
you would consider our 'family' big or not, but we have seven (soon to be
eight, sigh, fuzzy logic (or ferret math)), and there are not two among them
that act or respond the same to anything!  Here they are, in order of
aquirement:
 
Samson- 3 yr old Marshall Farms male.  Medium chocolate.  Sam is my baby of
the buch.  He is the oldest of the guys, but he is also a pseudo-dog.  He
insists that he is not a ferret, but rather that he is a dog.  I cannot go
anywhere in the house without him walking right beside me.  When I stop for
more than a couple of seconds, he will lay down across my feet until I bend
down and pick him up.  When I was gone for six weeks earlier this year, he
developed an ulcer.  He wouldn't play with any of the other guys, or my
wife.  Then when I got home, the ulcer vanished, and he was playful again.
He hardly ever dooks, even when he is heavily engrossed in wrestling, and is
very fast to his at his younger sisters if he doesn't want them around, but
not at his brothers.  Gets along great with: Seymour, Simba, Timon, and
Alex.  He will put up with Ginger and Suzie Q for a while, but then he has
to get away from them.  Litter pan hit rate: 85%
 
Seymour- 2.5 yr old Marshall Farms male.  Albino.  Seymour is like the 'Big
brother' of the family.  He is big enough to take all of the other guys on
at once, but he is a gentle sole.  He is the gentlest of all of our guys,
never picks on anyone else, and always lets the other guy (or gal) win the
wrestling match.  A very secure guy!  Here is the truly amazing thing with
Seymour, ever since he was 5 months old, he has NEVER missed the litter pan!
It doesn't matter if he is sleeping 3 rooms away from the pan, when he wakes
up, the first thing that he does is trot back to the cage and use the litter
pan.  A truly blessed event!  Gets along great with: Samson, Simba, Ginger,
Timon, Alex, and Suzie Q (everyone).  Litter pan hit rate: 100% (Honest!)
 
Simba- 2.5 yr old Marshall Farms male.  Heavy Silver-mitt.  This guy has
earned himself the nickname of 'The Fonz' because his fur is ALWAYS slicked
back and in perfect position, never a hair out of place.  Everyone else will
have their fur going in 8 different directions, but Simba's is always
perfect.  I think that he has a can of hair grease hidden somewhere and that
he is always slicking his hair down! :0  Simba used to be our wild child, or
so we thought, until the girls arrived!  Gets along great with: Samson,
Seymour, Ginger, Timon, Alex, and Suzie Q (everyone).  Litter pan hit rate:
95% (just shy of Seymour, accidents from this guy are VERY rare!)
 
Ginger- 5 month old Marshall Farm female.  Medium Sable-mitt.  This little
girl does not stop!  She needs to be into everything that is within 3 feet
of the ground!  When we brought her home, I was afraid of her getting picked
on by her much bigger brothers.  Boy, was I ever wrong!  It is HER that does
all of the bullying!  She doesn't give her brothers any rest.  It is a rare
sight to see this little one sleeping, she blows the average of 16-20 hours
of sleep in the dust!  With her, it is more like 6-8 hours of sleep, 16-18
hours of run,run,run,run,and run!  Gets along great with: Seymour, Timon,
and Suzie Q.  She is tolerated (most of the time) by: Samson, Simba, and
Alexander.  Litter pan hit rate: 55% :-( (We are still working on this!)
 
Timon- 1 yr old ????????  male.  Medium chocolate.  I have been told that
this little guy is Austrailian and Canadian, so I am not really sure.  He
only has one tattoo in his right ear (Any help on this would be greatly
appreciated).  This is the guy that I 'rescued' from an all bird-pet shop.
Somebody had given him to the owner of the store because they could not have
him where they were moving to.  Of course, this guy didn't know the first
thing about ferrets, and stuck him in a little 18x18x12 wire cage.  He was
being fed Iams DOG FOOD, and his nails were about 2 inches long!!  He is a
little jumpy around humans, and also is a little bit nippy, but just a
little.  I don't think that he was played with much as a kit, and is
therefore not used to human play time.  He gets along great with the other
fuzzies, though.  He is getting much better with the human play thingy too!
Gets along great with: Samson, Seymour, Simba, Ginger, Alexander, and Suzie
Q (everyone) Litter pan hit rate: 85%
 
Alexander- 2 yr old LOS breeder male.  Medium Cinnamon.  Alex is still a
whole male at this time, but he is slated to be neutered in Early Janurary.
He has sired a total of four litters for Rose of LOS-Pennsylvania chapter
(that is, if I remember right!).  Now he is a normal fun ferret!  :) Had our
first experience with a *poof* a couple of days ago!  Whew, hope that
doesn't happen to much!  Alex is real skittish around my wife and I.  He is
quick to run away and hide when we come in the room.  He is slowly coming
around, however.  I mentioned with Seymour that he (Seymour) was the biggest
of our guys.  Alex is the heaviest (JUST shy of 4 pounds), but Seymour has
about 2-3 inches on him.  Gets along great with: Samson, Seymour, Simba,
Ginger, Timon, and Suzie Q (everyone) Litter pan hit rate: 95% (only one
miss in the four weeks that he has been with us!)
 
Suzie Q- 3 month old Marshall Farm female.  Medium chocolate blaze.  Suzie
is the un-questionable WILD child of the bunch!  Scruffing has NO effect,
NO!  holds an equal amount of value to her, and she absolutely will NOT
stand for any holding, kissing, snuggling, or cuddling nonsense!  (A real
90's kind of woman!) She goes absolutely crazy over any of the other
fuzzies.  If someone else is up when she is, they try to hide before she
realizes that she has an available playmate!  All except for Ginger, that
is.  Those two girls are 75% of the time involved in some sort of wrestling
match or some sort of mischief.  I actually caught the two of them yesterday
working in unison to get into trouble.  Suzie was on the corner section of
our Sectional sofa Throwing everything that she could down to Ginger, who of
course promptly hid the various items in god only knows how many different
hidey-holes!  When I caught them, Ginger dove under the sofa and come
WALKING around from the corner and just stopped and looked at Suzie as if to
say "I told you not to do that, Suzie." She them looked up at me as if to
say " I told her, dad, I told her that was wrong!" Gets along great with:
Ginger, Seymour, Timon, and Simba.  Is tolerated by: Samson and Alexander.
Litter pan hit rate:45% (sigh, still working on this one too!)
 
Just a side note here: I have noticed that the only real difference between
the males and the females is in the cleanup of thier oopsies.  The female's
accidents are DEFINITELY a bigger headache to clean up, due to the fact that
they urinate and defecate on the same spot of carpet, where the male's urine
and stool are seperated by a couple of inches.  The urine creates a soupy
mess when trying to lift the stool off of the carpet with a paper towel.
Sorry to be grossing anyone out, but this is one of the factors that most of
my guys ARE guys.  As a matter of fact, both of the girls that we have now
were brought home by my wife.  Don't get me wrong, I love the girls just as
much as the guys!  :)
 
Scott Pearce and the Weasel Warriors
 
Samson- "I really am a dog, dad!"
Seymour- "I love ALL of my brothers and sisters so much!"
Simba- "Watch the hair, Suzie!"
Ginger- "Dad, let me take the new printer apart"
Timon- "Hey, I can get one of those shiny things off of the tree, dad!"
Alexander- "Hey Dad, POOF!"
Suzie Q- "Dad, let me stuff Ginger IN the new printer for payback!"
[Posted in FML issue 1418]