Hello, ferret friends --

I believe that ferrets have no trouble with cold -- at the very least
with a little acclimatization and the ability to come into a warm place
when they like. I have corresponded a ittle with a great woman in
Norway where the temps get to 20[c] below, and her ferrets and those of
friends of hers, live outdoors 24/7. I will be sending you a copy of
some of our correspndence soon, I am almost certain. BIG is vetting it
for the correct permissions.

Meanwhile, here is my own experience: As lots of you know, my ferts
have free access to the inside and the outside of my house (pardon the
repetition of its description in this post!). And they do go out late
late at night on the bitterest cold of weathers.

I'm a late-night person and am often up at 3am , 4am, and, well,
certainly see the dawn often as well. So I regularly go into the
ferrets' room at those hours (usually leavng the lights off). And there
is very very often some skritzy scrabbling scurrying noise as one or
more of them is going in or out via the big (4"-diameter) plastic
drainage pipe that goes through the window from their indoor cage. From
the pipe, they run along a loooooong mesh walkway/tunnel that is 5+
feet up in the air, and they must get the full dose of the night's cold
up there. The walkway has carpet on the bottom, and it leads to two
widely separated outdoor pens.

We have been having a cold spell -- e.g., 5 degrees some nights, and
snow is on the ground. One of their outdoor pens is right outside my
back door. The other night I opened up the door (to do something for
the dogs) and there were two of the ferts -- big Phillippe and feisty
little Ada -- wrestling in the snow, rolling over and doing the whole
ferret thing.

I gave my ferrets this indoor-outdoor seup in early fall, and they used
it, day and night, without any delay. I' think they had a couple months
before real cold set in, and that was apparently enough time for them
to get gradually acclimated.

Pretty exciting, isn't it? They themselves choose when to go out, of
course, and they must love it or they wouldn't do it. Another time they
really love it is if I have had them out ito play and cuddle and I put
them back in the cage before they are ready. Well, off some of them
dash to the pipe and scrabble-scrabble-scrabble, they are out!.

When I first istalled the pipe, I found to my amazement that the
ferrets chose to sleep right by it, despite the major chilly breeze
that sometimes came through at night. I hadn't antici[pated the breeze
since the pipe curves to come in the window, but of course air doesn't
care about a curve in a tunnel, does it? I ended up covering the end of
the pipe with a lovely thick flap/pad made by fastening a small custom
piece of bedding Rose G made for me some time ago. Some cold air comes
in, but not much, and the ferrets weasle their way around the pad to go
in and out.

They seem to sleep near iit or not, depending on how cod it is. But
they are often in a big heap nquite near it, even when it is cold.

My vet says thy look great, and she thinks that they are getting a lot
of good from the setup.

So, now, guess what -- this is an addiction, you know --there is now a
section of drain pipe going from an opening n the back of their cage
and sticking out a few inches into the kitchen, wit the end blocked off
with wire mesh. It's been like that for a few days, and the ferrets
look out into the kitchen and sometimes sleep in the pipe.

But soon the kitchen will look a little like Alan's ferret rooms.
Except that I hope to paint the drain pipes French blue. I bought some
paint tonight that is supposed t bond to plastic. We will seeeeee.

[Posted in FML 5502]