It's been too long!  Life has been seriously busy!
 
I saw Meghan & Martin the Martian's post the other day stating that my
Pandora is the Second Best Ferret in the Whole Wide World.  WAIT A MINUTE!
I never conceded that!!  As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out on
who's #1!!!
 
Pandora is a hard one to figure out.  She's even more beautiful now-- with
the return of cold weather (my first fall with her), her coat has changed.
The fur is longer, thicker, and has changed color to a Panda pattern!  I'm
thrilled, and the coincidence of coat color/name sounding so similiar is
cute, too.  Pandora spends part of her time lately being dragged across the
floor rather like a carcass by Flower, and I don't really understand that
when I know she's perfectly capable of kicking Flower's butt; Pandora has
established herself Boss & Chief Terrorist of our dog-- a 100 pound pitbull
cross.  Pandy just terrorizes him when she's out!  He has to lie perfectly
still on the couch to escape her.  If he gets down and walks, she's on him!
She runs back and forth between his legs, tripping him up, nipping his
ankles, hit-and-running his knees and belly, sometimes grabbing and hanging
on!  His eyes roll and he tries to run.  We have to defend him from the
evil Pandy.  Naturally if she starts it the others follow suit (but they're
more easily distracted).
 
Moogie, thanks to Prednisone and still twice-daily handfeeding, is just as
plump as sassy as the others now.  But boy is he antisocial.  He doesn't
play well with others.  He treats Tank, the other male, the worst.  If the
others get close to him, he just turns around and attacks them without
preamble.  I did try caging them together for a while, and it worked pretty
well.  I even caught Moogie lying on top of Tank in the hammock cleaning
Tank's ears one day.  But then Moogie started losing weight again (doesn't
eat as much as when alone) so I reluctantly put him back into a solitary
cage again during the day while I'm gone.
 
Tank is getting sweeter.  He doesn't bite anymore, and I've gotten kisses a
couple of times.  He's still my big fat white rat boy.  The sharpest claws
of the bunch.  He puts my daughter into terror.  He 'trees' her every time
he's out, running at her and leaping up at her.  He's a soda freak, too-
one day he spotted a Mountain Dew can 'safely' on a high bookshelf.  Of
course, he found a way to get up there and picked up the can in his teeth,
then leaping as off a high-dive to the floor without spilling a drop!
 
Miss Flower is the "ferrety-est" of the ferrets.  I mean, like the
stereotypes-- fast, sneaky little critter, into everything and gone with a
flash.  She's also the most aloof, and the most slim, shiny and petite of
ferrets.  Her whole gig in life is to drive me crazy by vanishing into
holes and openings that I never knew existed, too fast for me to catch her.
I've tried everything I can think of to block her from my kitchen.  She
gets into the cabinets, under the cabinets, under the fridge, under the
stove-- despite blockades.  I also tried a baby-gate at the opening (no
door); she just climbs it.  She's a little pain, but she keeps me on my
toes.
 
It's so fun to sit on the sofa and watch a squirming mass of four ferrets
squiggling around at my feet every night (because of course, romping with
one another and fussing and fighting is MUCH more fun than exploring or
playing with us!).
 
They're a blast.
Vickie, Moogie, Pandora, Tank, Flower, Ogre, Subatai, etc etc etc
[Posted in FML issue 2469]