Just another note.  The last  one  was  largely  mechanical  with
comments  on  taking  care of a ferret with cancer.  I'll go into
more of a story-telling mode and let you know what  the  Crandall
weasels are doing these days.
 
Meltdown is an extraordinary climber -- our experience  has  been
that  about 1 in 3 ferrets are strongly attracted to climbing and
get into "another dimension" of trouble.  Meltdown climbs  chairs
and  people  as  easily  as  she  moves  on the floor.  She loves
climbing onto your shoulder and then jumping onto  someone  else.
This  can  really  startle  guests  unaccustomed  to this kind of
behavior.
 
Meltdown is also into answering machines (as mentioned by others)
and  computer keyboards.  The home machine is a Mac, which has an
"on" key right on the keyboard.  If she is unsupervised it  isn't
long before we hear the Mac power up.
 
Ruffle is now 1 year old and  is  both  extremely  beautiful  and
extremely stupid.  We've never seen such a dim-witted ferret, but
she does love to be hugged.  She  is  also  built  like  a  truck
(she's  big  for a female and very strong) and spends much of her
time knocking our male (Hjalmar) over.
 
All of the guys are very confused about Fritter (our ferret  with
cancer).   We've  moved her to a bathroom just off our bedroom so
we can watch her more carefully and they don't see her constantly
as they did in the past.  Hjalmar and Meltdown seem to sense that
something is wrong and both get "freaky" at times.
 
Ferret toys:
 
A ferret "Dalek"   -- give them a small plastic bucket.   One  of
our  guys  will  crawl under the bucket and pilot it all over the
place with her tail hanging  out.   Periodically  one  edge  will
raise a bit and a ferret nose will pop out.  Then the bucket goes
back down and continues it cruise.  This really annoys the  other
ferrets.
 
Plastic bottles   -- we cut the bottoms out of 1  gallon  (heavy)
plastic  bottles.   These  are  great  (as  far  as  our guys are
concerned) as they make lots of noise when scratched.  These  are
also good to hang in their denning cages.
 
Long cardboard tubes of various diameters.  Ruffle loves to  find
ones  that  are too small for her and get herself wedged in.  You
will then see a tube go shooting over the floor with  two  little
feet  and  a  tail  at  the  end.   She will do this until she is
exhausted.
 
Water dishes -- drop toys or raisins in a water dish.
 
The Crandall weasels [log in to unmask]
                                                                          
[Posted in FML 0152]