Insurance: We have never placed an insurance claim with our carriers for
anything except on our dental and medical insurance, and back when we had
medical insurance for catastrophic care only that went about 10 years
without a claim.  The result is that most of the time that we have had
ferrets (not the very early time since we didn't have home insurance
then) we have also had insurance.  We have only once had to have a
consultation with an insurance agent (when someone who drove into our
legally stopped car in a parking lot had her insurance company stall on
fixing our car) and that took very little time in which he gave us
perfect advice for getting paid by the other company.
 
Yes, they have wiggle room.  When the company Steve worked for offered a
special rate through a different company our history caused our carrier
to offer an unbeatable price.  I guess that what I am saying is that the
claim past might play into getting or not getting insurance.  Yes, there
have been times that a ferret has stolen a camera and dropped it, or
damaged our carpet, but we consider those expected costs which we simply
have to handle ourselves or do without, and consider that worth it due to
not raising premiums and due to having insurance available.  For us the
insurance is there in case something major like a fire happens.  We also
are very careful about raising our ferrets to be extra gentle (with no
physical punishment) and we are extra careful that if people without
animal skills are in the house that they have very controlled
interactions or no interactions even despite our ferrets being so gentle.
Anyway, I suspect that the past use history for insurance may play into
things.
 
Oh, WOW, a home repair (and other repairs since they mention bikes) site.
THANKS for mentioning that, Claire!
 
D., do be careful.  Ingested nicotine can kill a ferret, and side stream
smoke from cigarettes has been shown in a cat study to greatly increase
the risk of developing lymphoma so there is always the concern of
possibly seeing the same result with ferrets.
 
Because I have to carry meds in case of an anaphylactic reaction we hung
shaker pegs in an unclimbable spot and that is where my pocketbook lives.
 
And for those who don't know, some ferrets do easily open zippers.  When
Meltdown first figured zippers out we had to have a moratorium on others
going near here because she discovered that opening people's flies got
her a lot of attention!  Don't think that just because a pocketbook (or
anything else) is zipped that the ferret won't get into it.
 
In April of 2002 Barbara mentioned a home using Boric Acid in which
ferrets died, and Roger replied in
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/browse.php?msg=YG12549.  I'd DEFINITELY check
with the ASPA's poison page, and with similar resources.  Look in the FML
Archives both for cautions and for things others have used successfully.
You will find the location of the FML Archives in the headers of the FML.
 
Like Linda, I've used Ela's tip about peppermint oil, and have also found
a combo of peppermint oil and lemon oil to be useful to repel a type of
tiny fungus beetle that can climb through screens when young and used to
come up from our wood chips some years.  In fact, we'll likely have them
this Spring since the Winter's been so wet here.
[Posted in FML issue 4085]