Advance warning...fairly long post.
 
Well, I finally got a ferret after 5 years of waiting and over a year of
reading the FML religiously...then added 2 more two weeks later...man,
ferret math is potent!  I have a few nip questions...
 
Claudia is about 6 mos old.  I got her from Sam in New Zealand, and she is
the prettiest ferret I've ever seen.  My one problem is...she bites faces.
She has never bitten me anywhere else, but if I hold her up to my face, she
nips me.  She's bitten my forehead, nose, cheeks, chin, and the other day
she got a pretty good hold of my lip.  She has never drawn blood, but it
does hurt, and it makes me nervous to let others hold her.  But she's the
best one to hold because she will actually hold still in your arms, which
my other two won't even consider for more than 4 seconds. =)  Any ideas
why she does this, and how I can break her of it?  I've tried scruffing,
hissing, saying no bite, dragging across the floor, putting my finger in
her mouth...none of it seems to have fazed her.
 
Julia is a sweet thing...until she sees an ankle.  Then it's carpet shark
attack time!  She has lick-lick-chomped my arm, but she doesn't nip hard
enough to hurt when she does that.  But if I don't pay attention to her
proximity to my ankles, I get a painful surprise as I sit at my computer
doing my work.  Again...any suggestions?
 
Bailey, my silly boy has never nipped me...the thing I need to break him of
is taking the cage in his mouth and shaking it.  He does it in the middle
of the night, and my husband is really starting to get annoyed with being
woken up at 3 when he has to get up at 6 for work.  I've tried time out in
the carrier, I've tried spraying him, I've even tried letting him out once
or twice to play, and see if he just needs to run off some steam, but I
don't want him to think he can get out any time he wants just by shaking
the cage.  And none of it works, anyway.  I let them out for about 2 hrs
every night, and will often let them out during the day for another hour or
so when I'm home.  They can't be free roaming, because my apartment just is
NOT ferret proofed.  The bedroom is, for the most part, but I worry about
leaving them out even in the bedroom when I'm not here to supervise.
 
One other problem (then I'll stop, I promise!)  Someone is pooping outside
the litterbox, right under the water bottle.  I think it's Julia, but I'm
not sure.  There's nowhere to put a litterbox there (it's right by the cage
door).  I've tried putting bedding that they'd slept on for a few days in
the spot where the poop was, with the result of...poop on the bedding.  Any
more ideas?
 
I apologise for the length of this...didn't think I had THAT many questions
when I started this letter.
 
Thanks in advance for advice!
 
Jessica and
the first 3/5 of my "Business of Five" -
Bailey
Claudia
Julia
[Posted in FML issue 2680]