I just thougt I'd share our take on hissing.  My husband plays with the
ferrets a lot differenly than I do.  In my mind he plays too rough, but the
ferrets never seem to mind, and they come back for more.  What he does is
holds them and bites them on the back of the neck, where we would scruff
them.  He doesn't bite too hard, but enough for them to know what he's
doing.  The entire time he's doing this, they hiss like a windstorm, and
sometimes if they get really mad at him, their tales bottlebrush.  But as
soon as he lets them go, they take off like a rocket, attacking everything
in sight, and always come bouncing back at him biting his toes and taking
off.
 
Ours hiss out of frustration/anger, like the above situation, and they also
hiss while playing and dooking.  Other times, their hiss says "ENOUGH".
We've learned to understand their "tone".  So I just think its a way of
expressing themselves however they are feeling at the moment.
 
- Mish
 
__MICHELLE Z. MATTA__________________________
Carnegie Mellon University......Athletic Dept
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http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/mish/home.html
(Departmental)....http://www.cmu.edu/athletic
_____________________________________________
[Posted in FML issue 1834]