*snip*
>loose, and is found just before starving to death.  BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT
>HUNTERS!!!  (At least none I've ever met - flame disclaimer) ...
 
>My SO eventually caught the absolutely 100% unharmed mouse in a jar.  So
>apparently, from my experience, I would have to say that my SO is a far
>better hunter than my ferret.
 
Just to provide some counter-examples for the above statements, our
ferrets -- at least three or four of them -- are excellent hunters.  More
effecient and ruthless than most cats I have owned.
 
My fiance and I breed gerbils and also keep rats as pets.  We dont'
intentionally breed rats, but have had some litters arrive before we could
get our males rats properly neutered.
 
When we had only a few gerbils and two ferrets, Taz hunted down a killed a
gerbil who had gotten out of his cage in about thirty seconds, much faster
than we could react to get him away from poor Spice.
 
Later, when we had both more gerbils and more ferrets, the ferrets got out
of their cage while we were not home and managed to get the lid off one of
the aquariums housing a gerbil family of seven -- Shadow, Ebony, and a
five-week-old litter of their pups.  The entire family was killed.  They
weren't all killed in the aquarium, either.  We had to track down the bodies
by following the blood splashes along the walls and carpet.  What was left
of the bodies (they actually ate parts of several) was stashed in one of our
kitchen drawers for safe-keeping.
 
When we had a litter of baby rats, Coffee would go ballistic on them.  Every
chance she got, she would be at the rat cage trying to kill them -- which
seemed a little odd, because she didn't before and doesn't now seem to be
bothered by our adult rats.  One of the adult rats and one of the babies got
a punctured foot, and Perrin had part of his tail pulled off because Coffee
had gotten a hold of it and tried to pull him through the bars of his cage.
 
At this point, we put up baby-gates and permanently confined the ferrets to
our bedroom.  A lot of people may have ferrets with no hunting instincts,
but we certainly aren't one of them, and I doubt they are as rare as people
seem to think, considering we've had four DAMNED good hunters and only a
total of nine ferrets.
 
Michelle
Flutist
 
--
Meet my pets.  The ferrets (Taz, Coffee, Daphne, Tia, Gretchen, and
Beelzebub), the gerbils (34 of them), the rats (seven of them), the budgies
(Sky and Cindy), the cockatiels (Snow and Spice), and the fish (various).
RIP Honey, Summer, Grendel, Peggie, Timmy and Racer.
[Posted in FML issue 1676]