Hi Alayne, You wrote: "This ferret is, to put in mildly, quite mean. . . . Could this just be a bad ferret?" It might be possible that your ferret has something organic wrong with him, but since he's a whole male, and since you have another whole male (whom you no doubt smell like), it's not surprising that he would try to bite you. Whole males will generally fight with each other pretty seriously (apparently to death, although I've only seen mild bleeding from the back of the neck when a pair at a breeder accidentally were let out to play together). The way they decide what to attack is by smell. When I've been handling a whole male, and I want to handle another, the first thing I do is (carefully) pick up the new male and rub him wherever the other ferret had touched me. This masks the scent of the previous ferret and keeps the new guy from wanting to attack. Ed Lipinski of Ferrets Northwest showed me this trick, and it's worked great every time I've tried it. I've met hundreds of ferrets (and been given one "biter"), but I haven't met any unsolvable behavior problems. After six months with the "biter," I still wouldn't hand him to children, who might not recognize the warning signs that he's thinking of biting, but he's become very attached (emotionally, I mean, not by the teeth) to my girlfriend, and hasn't had any biting incidents in months. If I were anywhere near Cleveland, I'd be happy to come handle him and see how he behaves. I wouldn't recommend sticking fingers in his mouth if he bites really hard. That's more something you do to let a kit know not to nip too hard. Instead, try scruffing him (just enough to get a hold of him, not enough to make him shut down), tweak his nose gently, and say "NO" firmly, if he tries to bite. If knowing about the scent problem doesn't help, perhaps you can just handle him carefully (i.e., keep him gently scruffed all the time he's in biting range) and be ready to dodge a bite. I'd expect standard behavioral training techniques to at least help out, if applied firmly, consistently, and with love. Good Luck, Dennis [Posted in FML issue 0935]