I have a female ferret named Nutmeg that has an odd behavior that is leaving me at wits end. She has a habit of trying to jump over the barrier that keeps them in the room. It sometimes seems like she's throwing herself at the barrier. She'll change it up by digging up the carpet and scratching the barrier. The thing about this is that this behavior means different things. 1. I'm hungry 2. I'm bored 3. I'm tired 4. I'm cranky and tired 5. I want something, but I don't know what it is 6. or I want to play stop sleeping! I usually go through this list several times a day. I offer food, I try to distract her, I curl her up in a ball and pet her, then I run out of things to do. This is extremely annoying, it's disturbing my early morning sleep and I just don't know what to do for her. I've noticed that sometimes she needs some form of stimulation (play) to eat. when I put her in the cage she'll curl up and take a nap, but mostly she'll bite and dig at the cage. She's very smart but has O/C issues. One of those is belts. When I pick her up the first thing she does is check my belt. She's very demanding and taxing. Does anyone have any ferrets like this and what can I do what have you done to change this behavior? I've tried to put the ferrets to bed in the cage, which they hate, but they/she will wake me up earlier than I need to be. I can't let them out too early because they'll make too much noise rough-housing. I live upstairs and we can make noise 8am-10pm. It's not easy shushing them when they start to bounce off the walls. Thank you I really need some solutions. Michelle and The FuzzButts [Posted in FML issue 5219]