>Our friend swears that right after she asked Dewy where her sister is,
>Dewy marched right up to the second level of the cage and nudged the
>hammock with her nose. Our friend had not realized there was another
>layer on the hammock they could sleep in. Sure enough the missing
>ferret was right where Dewy had shown her.

Sherman used to find each by name and we had him do it pretty much
every day. Since we had as many as seven in those years he was very
helpful.

Currently, Orville refuses and we think he considers it tattling
because he consistently points in the opposite direction which can also
be helpful. Kessy often will tell but the request has to be whispered
to her. On very rare occasions Pivot will realize that we really mean
it and will point out where someone is.

The best ferret locator episode, though, happened many years ago with
Meltdown when Warp was just a kit. Like our current Pivot, Warp would
often sleep when being called and even snoozed through ducky squeaking.
It's isn't deafness, just deep sleep. One day we absolutely HAD to find
Warp, then just a kit, who had been out playing and had crashed
somewhere. Steve looked Meltdown in the eye and several times repeated,
"Meltdown get Warp then Meltdown get treat". After a bit she fussed to
get down, went under the platform bed, and soon emerged dragging sleepy
Warp by the scruff, deposited Warp on Steve's foot, then looked up at
Steve and licked her chops. (Meltdown very mush believed in depositing
on Steve's big feet. When really annoyed with him she would sometimes
turd on one of his feet.)

Ferrets can be funny with how they put together commands. When Pivot
was first having trouble accepting Keskittää (which means Focus) we
tried to remind Pivot how well Telemna had accepted her. At that point
we had had another ferret inbetween, Ariane who died of JL at less than
a year of age, but apparently one of Telemna's behaviors was still
strongly stuck in Pivot's mind. Emmy (Telemna) used to play piano (and
you will notice that they had great drag games that day including
dragging a food dish that scattered kibble everywhere):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayJ-WvVaRnE

Well, Pivot took a long while before she accepted Kessy, BUT when I
repeatedly urged her to be like Telemna (who had immediately accepted
Pivot and nurtured her) Pivot began playing a toy piano more than a
year after Emmy's death! She does not play Telemna's piano. Instead she
plays a larger one and she really tries. Music is definitely not the
important part of Pivot's life that it was for Emmy. Emmy even used
to go into what looked like a trance when listening to music and had
strong favorites like Liza Minelli singing anything, the theme song
from that film about the first modern Olympics, and "Eat the Rich"
which for some reason was her absolute favorite. She actually listened
intensely to wide range of music. She'd try to jam with some, and she
could duplicate 8 notes precisely (at time a few more so some patterns
may have made more sense to her) if they were repeated to her a few
times. Despite music not being her thing Pivot apparently felt that
being more like Telemna meant piano playing so for the last year she
has played maybe 4 to 6 days every week and is getting better at it.

We find that the ferrets who are not deaf are incredibly capable with
understanding sounds. That is not a huge surprise. Their ancestors had
to deal in the total darkness of burrows, knowing aspects of what they
were stalking and the associated sounds, and of what might be stalking
them or their kits and their sounds, as well as safe sounds, so they
are pre-adapted for dealing with sounds. They just need consistent
repetition in words and structure. (We even had a partly deaf one who
did okay as long as sounds were pitched low enough for her range of
hearing loss. If someone spoke to her in too high a pitch she would
place a hand on their moving lips as if trying to determine if they
were making any sounds so she MIGHT have been self-aware of not hearing
some things.)

I think we became aware of ferrets understanding language about 30
years ago due to two things. We noticed that if we mentioned that one
of the other ferrets had stashed a treat that Fritter would check that
OTHER ferret's favorite stash places, not her own, and then steal it.
Also, a treating vet who was just learning ferrets noticed with ours
that they responded to their names more readily than most dogs and
far more readily than cats.

Fritter, BTW, had her own signature things like any ferret. When she
was alpha for some unknown reason for discipline she would sit back on
her haunches and bop the offending ferret on the nose. She was the only
one, ferret or human, who did that. We also used to drink non-alcoholic
wine with dinners pretty often then and many had a plastic cap cover
that was designed to look like a cork was present under the foil. A lot
of ferrets loved batting those around but Fritter liked to line up her
bum over one and fill it with feces. Many days we would find those caps
sitting on a bathroom floor, filled, with one or two little brown dots
from her preferred version of wiping nearby.

So, long way around, but, yes, Dewey very well might have just decided
to do exactly what was requested.

Sukie (not a vet) Ferrets make the world a game.

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)

A nation is as free as the least within it.

[Posted in FML 7824]