A quick list of quirks, from some ferrets past & present:
Ferret: also known as Saint Ferret, or Nurse Ferret.  Ferret is always
the one who comforts the new arrivals to our home, and cuddles up with
the sick & dying through their last moments.  When she wants to be picked
up, she will lay at your feet and gaze up at you with the most guileless
face; not really imploring you to pick her up, but just trying to sell
you on the idea by acting angelically cute.
 
She has a fiendish love for tomatoes.  One of my favorite dishes from a
local Mexican takeout restaurant is a vegan taco salad, which is studded
with sliced tomatoes.  As soon as I sit myself on the couch, TV remote in
hand, to eat my delicious taco salad, Ferret will appear.  She will pull
herself up just high enough on my lap to reach the salad, sniff, pick out
a tomato slice, and run off to massacre it in the shower.  I have also
caught her mining for them in the trash, red (tomato?)-handed.  She is
also content to take a whole tomato, roll over on her back & munch on it
like an otter.  She is perfect.
 
Diamond (R.I.P.): LOVED men.  Anything to do with them, but particularly
their ears & smelly socks.  She was known to follow my ex throughout the
house, dooking all the way.  I'm pretty sure her previous owner was a
man, and she never quite got over being surrendered by him.  I always
imagined her dooking translated as "Are you my daddy?  Are you my daddy?"
 
Chloe (R.I.P.): was the wildest wardancer I've ever, ever known.  She
wouldn't just tap her feet around...she would wag both her head & tail
back & forth, & whip her body through the air like a snake, dooking &
hee-heeing all the way.  Each play session was followed by an immediate,
sound nap...no wonder.
 
Busty Dook: is deaf, which I'm sure explains much of his behavior.  He
is almost constantly upside-down.  When I hold him in my arms, he turns
himself on his back & stares at the floor.  When I open the cage door, I
am almost always greeted by his blinking, upside-down face gliding out of
his hanging cube to say hi.  When he is out playing, he likes to lay on
his back & pull himself along the baseboard, upside down.  He is also a
fiendish dooker, and up until his recent illness could play like a madman
'til the cows came home.
 
Officer Simon SweetDook: The chief aider & abetter to Busty Dook's
antics.  I never had a ferret with a poofy tail, until SweetDook came
along - he taught everyone else the fine art of the Bottlebrush.  He is
completely off the wall, and not terribly affectionate.  However, he is
sweet in his own way.  He knows when I'm upset, and will come over to
check on me when he senses it.  He's also obsessed with the bathtub -
if I would let him live there, that would be fine with him.  When he's
tired of playing, I can usually find him reclining in the tub, using his
favorite tube of my toothpaste as a pillow.  When I put him to bed in the
cage, I then have to move the sofa out of the way so I can recover all
the bottles of shampoo, body wash, bars of soap & toothbrushes he has
removed from the shower & placed there.
 
Tiggy (R.I.P.): was an ancient, grumpy little old lady who didn't much
care for other ferrets.  However, the love she had for people was simply
amazing.  Up until her recent death from spinal lymphoma, her favorite
place to be was inside the front of my shirt while I sat quietly & read.
When she was let out to play, she would generally just take a stroll
around and sample some food from the cat's dish.  I would then usually
feel a tiny paw on my foot.  When I looked down, her cranky, waspishly
adorable little face would be staring back at me, as if to say "okay,
it's Tiggy & Mummy time!!  Pick me up!"  She would then jam her face into
the crook of my elbow, make her little "Hmmmph!" noise, and go to sleep.
What a love she was.
 
There are such unique, precious little souls staring out at us from those
masked faces.  Thanks for sharing your stories...it has made the FML very
entertaining as of late.
 
Jessica M.
 
Jessica L. Manson
15 Monmouth St. #2
Boston, MA 02128
(617) 785-4533
[log in to unmask]
www.whimsyphoto.com
[Posted in FML issue 4859]