My thanks to the people who wrote me privately.  As I mentioned, Sidney had
gone through a lot of changes in only a few days for a twelve-week-old boy:
Moving from the pet shop to my mother's house, going on a four-hour ride
back to our home, relocating into our home, getting to know Daisy and Zeke,
and changing food.  His loose stools have firmed up to normal, he is eating
like a little pig, and has the energy of ... well, a ferret!
 
A new little wrinkle: We are nearly certain that Sidney is deaf.  Yesterday,
I walked into my daughter's room where Sidney was drinking from the water
bottle; I called out, in normal tones, "Hi, Sidney, how are you doing?" He
kept drinking.  When he was finished drinking, I went over to pick him up,
and just then, he turned around, startled, and looked at me as if to say,
"Where in the hell did YOU come from?" Other experiments seem to confirm
this: The squeaky toy will drive the other two crazy while he seems totally
oblivious to the noise.
 
This tends to explain a number of things about his slow socialization with
the others, his apparent "aloofness", and his practice of keeping his eyes
half-open FAR longer than seems normal when resting in someone's arms.
 
He'll be a special one, no doubt.  And I will now read much more closely
here when someone comments on the unique aspects of caring for a deaf
ferret.
 
By the way, he's still going to be a very big boy, compared with our
other two!
 
Paul Sadek
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Visit The Sadek Pet Gallery at http://ww2.sd.cybernex.net/~psadek/pets.html
[Posted in FML issue 1713]