Hi all!

We're looking for advice or shared experiences for our situation with
Gator, our 10 month old, big, lovable albino boy.

In a way he was a rescue, I fell in love with him the first time I held
him and he started kissing me. Then I learned that he'd been in the pet
shop for 8 months. I started praying for a good home for him, but a
month later he was still there at the pet shop. To make a long story
short, my husband talked me into bringing him home. Everything was
great for the first 2 weeks, Gator was very excited to be out of a cage
the first time in his entire life, not to mention the tunnels, toys,
free-roaming rooms and other ferrets to play with. He was basically
fearless, trying to climb and jump and shrugging off any ferret that
tried to bully him. But then he became fearful, startling easy, and
running at every little sound. He became a recluse, hiding within the
drawers that they like to sleep in. So much so that he was eating
and doing his business in there. By the time I checked out what I'd
suspected, I had quite a mess to clean up. For now, all 6 of our
fur-kids are locked out of the drawers. He has improved a lot, but
still regresses periodically. He'll run and play and be very sociable
with all of us, and then he gets skittish, runs and hides at some
little sound or if you come around the corner quickly. It's like he's
two different ferrets.

Our temporary solution has been to keep him out of the drawers and
caged (in a triple-decker Ferret Nation cage) when we're at work. He
does have 2 others in the cage with him and they're free-roaming in 4
rooms the rest of the time.

Have any of you run into this kind of thing? It's just my husband and
I, so no one has abused him. He had taken a few falls trying to jump
from the toilet to the sink though. My guess is that it has something
to do with his having been caged for the first 9 months of his life
and then having so much freedom. I wondered if perhaps it is a form of
'shelter shock', but he's eating and drinking fine and seems to be a
happy, sociable guy when he's not trying to hide.

Thanks and best wishes to all of you!

Toni & Robert and the sassy six

[Posted in FML 5668]