Off and on over the (my gosh, is it three years already) time that I've had
Francine and Errata, I've noticed that Errata's whiskers on one side look as
if they were broken off or missing.  Sometimes completely missing, with just
a little stubble.
 
I worried that it was due to some vitamin deficiency, that the whiskers were
so brittle that they would break off when she slept on that side.  But
they'd eventually grow back, and remain strong and pliant for months ... and
then disappear again, by inches.  Just on one side.  And I would never find
the broken-off pieces in the bedding or in the cage.
 
Then one night, working late, I heard the most curious noise from the corner
where they were sleeping.  Clip ka-cha clip ka-cha CLIP CLIP CLIP.
 
There was Errata, dead to the world, with Francine munching on her whiskers!
I watched as she methodically severed a whisker with her front teeth, and
then crunched it up with a very wise and contemplative look on her face,
like a little horse eating hay.
 
I've heard of rodents and rabbits barbering their cagemates.  But Francine
just eats (actually ingesting) the whiskers, not Errata's fur.  This also
doesn't happen very often (judging from the condition of Errata's whiskers),
maybe once every three months or longer.  And I don't think it's from
confinement--they pretty much have run of the house most of the time, and at
the time that I witnessed the behavior, they were sleeping out of the cage.
 
Anyone else witness or suspect something like this with their ferrets?
 
-- Lee
   __________________________________________
   All depends upon keeping the eye steadily
   fixed upon the facts of nature, and so
   receiving their images simply as they are,
   for God forbid that we should give out a
   dream of our own imagination for a pattern
   of the world.
                             -- Francis Bacon
[Posted in FML issue 2358]