Well, after weeks and weeks of working with it, our ferret (Bobby the
Brain, for non-WWF fans, is a name given to a wrestling "manager" who
is a bad guy.  Whenever he is at ringside, the fans chant, "Weasel,
weasel.") has finally quit biting.
 
We have many pets, so the ferret simply can't be allowed the run of
the house.  We bought it from a pet store, where it was obviously the
remaining ferret from the previous batch.  They were selling it with
everything that happened to be in it's aquarium, the aquarium, and so
forth, for about half what a young ferret would cost.  I suspected
that the folks in the pet store simply couldn't handle it.  They
didn't want to open the aquarium to handle the ferret, and told us
that they thought that the ferret probably could never be handled,
before we bought it.
 
We took it to the vet for a checkup.  The ferret bit the vet.  The
ferret bit the vet's assistant.  These weren't simple little bites, he
would bite and hang on, as if he was playing tug of war with your
finger.  We couldn't handle him w/o heavy gloves, and so forth.
 
Well, we decided to use the boredom of his cage against him.  Every
night we would get him out of his cage, and put him on the bed.  This
was a little world he loved.  He could burrow under the covers, play
in a plastic grocery bag, crawl through a large wrapping paper tube,
drag his rubber mouse around, and so forth (his rubber mouse guards
his food bowl.  When he is eating, he carefully places the mouse by
the side of the bowl.  When he is not eating, he puts his mouse back
into the bowl).  He really loved this.
 
First or second nip, and he got a whack on the nose.  Hard. (hard for
a ferret, just a little bap that wouldn't bother a dog).  First real
bite, or third nip, and he got another bap, and right back into the
aquarium.
 
This finally made an impression.  Now we can reach into his cage and
change his water, add food, pick him up, without gloves and without
bites.
 
When we took the ferret to the vet, he said that he thought that we'd
never be able to handle Bobby.  I'm glad he was wrong.
 
 
We do have one problem, though.  When we got him, he had a litter pan.
He always used it.  Shortly after we got him, he discovered that there
was an "under" to the litter pan, and as soon as we would put litter
in it, and put it in his cage, he would check under it, to make sure
that there weren't any mice there.
 
Thus the litter got all over his cage, and became useless.
 
This is an ordinary aquarium.  It has a glass bottom, so weights in
the litter pan will eventually be dumped on the bottom, and will break
it.  I've been unable to come up with a way to make the ferret not
want to be under the litter box, and so have had to quit using it.
 
Can anyone make a suggestion as to what I could do to hold the litter
box down, or any other way to improve the situation?
 
 
Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- [log in to unmask] (Internet)
Seen on a button at an SF Convention:
Form blazing chainsaw!
                                                                          
[Posted in FML 0081]