>Does anyone use smell or light to try to attract a deaf ferret?  I wonder
>if there is any range that they can hear (very high or very low)?  Just
>curious and thinking of ways to find one in the event they may wander off.
>The (deaf) DEW I have now, Merlin, is the most persistent escape artist
>I have ever met.  Possibly because he has no sounds to distract him, not
>sure.  If anything is moved even a fraction of an inch, Merlin will seize
>the opportunity to climb it to get to something else.  He can also undo
>just about any barrier I put up.  He has endless persistence.  My 2 best
>escape artists are Merlin, the largest, who uses his strength, and
>Petunia, the tiniest, who can fit through things the others can't, and
>who is a very good climber.
 
If our deaf guys can see us, we waggle our fingers to call them.
Otherwise, it's a matter of hunt-and-dig-out-of-fill-in-the-blank, usually
couch, bed, or bookcase.  We've tested the two of them quite extensively
with a variety of sounds.  Leo, a chocolate with white toe-tips on one foot
and a bib (cutie!), can quite obviously not hear.  He drags other ferrets
around while they scream, and he's under the impression that they're happy
to be playing with him.  Breaks our hearts.  We've discovered that he can
probably hear extremely high-pitched noises; a certain squeaky toy always
gets a reaction, if he's close to it.  Unfortunately, the reaction is to
run and hide--as though, since he can't usually hear anything at all, a
sound that does intrude on his consciousness is terrifying.  Once he
actually peed from fear.  We try not to squeak it around him, but it's
the toy the other ferrets come to, so we've made a few mistakes.
 
Anake is a lovely panda girl, deaf as a doorknob.
 
Believe it or not, there's one thing that has brought them running once or
twice--we jump up and down until the floor shakes. :-)  Ani in particular
will come running to see what's going on, provided she's awake.  Sleaps
like the dead.
 
I'd be interested to see anyone else's ideas.
 
Jen and the Crazy Business
http://home.maine.rr.com/tesseract=20
[Posted in FML issue 3118]