One of the (many) things that continues to fascinate me about ferrets is how
"human" their emotions are (my apologies, Fuzzies, if this is insulting).
Another is how they manage to have facial expressions which clearly reflect
their emotions when I'll be darned if I can see a squint or a wrinkle or any
of the clues I use to read human faces. A daily case-in-point is Sabine's
abiding jealousy of -- and desire to kill -- the female ferrets who have
arrived in our house since we first purchased Sabine and Eloise, the only
female she will tolerate.
Two years after Sabine and Eloise came to delight us, I discovered the FML
and began adopting a few unwanted ferrets. Bizzy (now at the Rainbow
Bridge) and Baby were the initial intruders. For two days, Sabine would
lie on the stairs watching me get to know the new girls. She looked
thoroughly miserable, even though I made sure she still got lots of love.
By the third day she seemed to figure out that the new girls weren't
leaving .... and then she decided to kill them. The look on her face was
so angry I was shocked, and the way she went for their necks was no
dominance play. Sheena Staples gave me lots of good advice on how to
socialize them all, but she also warned me that some females simply never
will accept other females.
Two years have passed, and more ferrets have joined us. The four boys
live with Eloise and Sabine in the larger of my two cages, and all of them
happily coexist. Baby and Zoe, the newest girl, live in the smaller cage,
and I have to take turns letting the two pairs of girls out, while the boys
are out all day long. And Sabine still wants to kill the other girls.
When Eloise sees the other girls, she paws at the rug like a maddened 1
pound bull while her tiny hind end dances like a baby skunk's, but I can
tell she'd be okay with them if she were forced to. Sabine, on the other
hand, is obsessed with their existence. At least once a day, I lift her
off their cage where she is pulling bedding out through the bars in an
attempt to get either Baby or Zoe close enough to the bars to bite them.
She knows how I feel about it, so sometimes she will climb down and come to
me when I call her name in a warning tone of voice. When I occassionally
don't realize that Baby or Zoe is still out when I let Sabine out, she
makes a beeline for their sleeping place and shakes the ferret she catches
so hard their head bangs and bangs against the floor.
The part that most gets me to thinking about jealousy and how similar her
emotions are to a person's is when Sabine wants me to play with her or
cuddle her, but then she remembers that Baby and Zoe exist, and she will
actually leave something she wants to do with me in order to check out
their cage and look for a toe or nose to attack. She gets such a
single-mindedly vengeful look in her eye! If looks could kill, those girls
would be long dead. You can practically see beams of hatred directed
towards their cage.
Sabine is a wonderful girl, very loving and gentle in all ways but this
one. Yet she is so obsessed with her jealousy that she will literally not
be able to enjoy certain times with me because of the thought that the
others still live and I will surely play with them, too. I've been known
to fall under a bit of jealousy myself from time to time in my life, and
I must say that watching the self-damaging vigilance with which Sabine
regards Baby and Zoe has forced me to see how destructive to self jealousy
can be. She ruins some of her own play times, and her unrelenting anger
is the sole reason that she is not allowed to roam 16 hrs a day. It's
fascinating and also sad.
-------------------------------------------------------
Ask me how to save money while supporting ferret shelters.
1% of my monthly internet bill, 2% of my long distance
and intrastate phone bill, and 1% of my calling card bill
go to the FML Shelter Fund. And the rates are great!!
We also offer ferret coloring books and a booklet for the
grocery store coupons of your choice to support shelters.
[Posted in FML issue 2434]
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