I was part of a private discussion on ferret talking and it hit me that
individual ferret quirks may be a fun topic here.
 
Halekala was a real talker.  She adored Steve, figured that she came
next in the hierarchy (no matter when we tried), and then me, then other
ferrets.  Steve would talk to her and then wait and she would babble a
bunch of noise back to him.  Then he'd talk again.  We have never had
another one who did that.  Haleakala had actual repeatable verbal names
for three things: Both Steve and milk were "Mkkkk" (Yeah, he bribed her a
lot and she did just fine with milk.) Her name for me was pretty danged
close to that Pfftt!  of disgust they sometimes use.  (Hey, I was the
competition for Steve...)
 
She also OWNED my belly button.  It was hers and she would freak if it
smelled like Steve.  I would get a full bellybutton grooming.  You know
how their little incisors and rough tongues can feel on protracted
groomings.  I'd get really, really sore.  Finally I took to carefully
washing my belly button any time Steve and I made love or when he played
with my navel before Hale would have a chance to get near it.
 
Oh, and we used to take walks with Hale a lot and if we asked her where
Hale's house was she could orient herself and point to a straight line
way home.  She was very much an individual!
 
Fritter on the other hand would have gotten lost in a cardboard box and
she owned my left breast -- not my right, just my left, and liked me to
lie on my side so that she could use it as a pillow.  She also had her
own unusual way of disciplining the others when she became alpha.  She
would sit on her haunches, curl her fingers, and bat them in the face!
I don't know if someone did that to her when she was little kit or if
she invented it, but she was our only boxer in 24 years.
 
Tandy owned my late grandpa's rocker and if anyone else tried to sit in
it she would stand on a stool next to it and try to push the person out.
She also liked to stash dried fruit in the bindings of physics and math
books (Those were the ones most handy.)  For ten years after her death
we still found dried fruit.
 
Spot had three funny things.  Like many ferrets he figured he could not
be seen if he stopped still.  He especially like to disappear that way
when he was on top of our bed.  Our comforter was black.  Spot was an
albino.  Spotty also could pull out those computer plugs that need to be
pressed.  He did it with one canine and it took him 20 seconds at his
fastest to completely undo all of Steve's computer things.  He would not
do it when watched or when the camcorder was there which is too bad.  We
wanted to record it for a now deceased British friend of Steve's who had
planned to put a ferret-like creature in one of his novels but died an
untimely death.  We figured that first we'd spring it in reverse on him
so that it would look like Spot was putting the plugs in, then we'd fess
up and show him the real thing.  Spotty also had a toy ferret which was
his dolly and in the summer he would put it in cool places, but in the
winter he would tuck it under covers.  He'd also put it by where the
treats are to try to get some more (for his ferret-mousie, of course)
once he'd reach his own limit.
 
We have a pile more, and I will put some in over the next few days or
weeks as my time permits, but only if others write in with some of their
ferrets' (past and current) funny quirks!
[Posted in FML issue 4853]