Marie Schatz was interested in the differences between female/male fuzzies and variations in temperments among 'big' ferret families. I don't know if you would consider our 'family' big or not, but we have seven (soon to be eight, sigh, fuzzy logic (or ferret math)), and there are not two among them that act or respond the same to anything! Here they are, in order of aquirement: Samson- 3 yr old Marshall Farms male. Medium chocolate. Sam is my baby of the buch. He is the oldest of the guys, but he is also a pseudo-dog. He insists that he is not a ferret, but rather that he is a dog. I cannot go anywhere in the house without him walking right beside me. When I stop for more than a couple of seconds, he will lay down across my feet until I bend down and pick him up. When I was gone for six weeks earlier this year, he developed an ulcer. He wouldn't play with any of the other guys, or my wife. Then when I got home, the ulcer vanished, and he was playful again. He hardly ever dooks, even when he is heavily engrossed in wrestling, and is very fast to his at his younger sisters if he doesn't want them around, but not at his brothers. Gets along great with: Seymour, Simba, Timon, and Alex. He will put up with Ginger and Suzie Q for a while, but then he has to get away from them. Litter pan hit rate: 85% Seymour- 2.5 yr old Marshall Farms male. Albino. Seymour is like the 'Big brother' of the family. He is big enough to take all of the other guys on at once, but he is a gentle sole. He is the gentlest of all of our guys, never picks on anyone else, and always lets the other guy (or gal) win the wrestling match. A very secure guy! Here is the truly amazing thing with Seymour, ever since he was 5 months old, he has NEVER missed the litter pan! It doesn't matter if he is sleeping 3 rooms away from the pan, when he wakes up, the first thing that he does is trot back to the cage and use the litter pan. A truly blessed event! Gets along great with: Samson, Simba, Ginger, Timon, Alex, and Suzie Q (everyone). Litter pan hit rate: 100% (Honest!) Simba- 2.5 yr old Marshall Farms male. Heavy Silver-mitt. This guy has earned himself the nickname of 'The Fonz' because his fur is ALWAYS slicked back and in perfect position, never a hair out of place. Everyone else will have their fur going in 8 different directions, but Simba's is always perfect. I think that he has a can of hair grease hidden somewhere and that he is always slicking his hair down! :0 Simba used to be our wild child, or so we thought, until the girls arrived! Gets along great with: Samson, Seymour, Ginger, Timon, Alex, and Suzie Q (everyone). Litter pan hit rate: 95% (just shy of Seymour, accidents from this guy are VERY rare!) Ginger- 5 month old Marshall Farm female. Medium Sable-mitt. This little girl does not stop! She needs to be into everything that is within 3 feet of the ground! When we brought her home, I was afraid of her getting picked on by her much bigger brothers. Boy, was I ever wrong! It is HER that does all of the bullying! She doesn't give her brothers any rest. It is a rare sight to see this little one sleeping, she blows the average of 16-20 hours of sleep in the dust! With her, it is more like 6-8 hours of sleep, 16-18 hours of run,run,run,run,and run! Gets along great with: Seymour, Timon, and Suzie Q. She is tolerated (most of the time) by: Samson, Simba, and Alexander. Litter pan hit rate: 55% :-( (We are still working on this!) Timon- 1 yr old ???????? male. Medium chocolate. I have been told that this little guy is Austrailian and Canadian, so I am not really sure. He only has one tattoo in his right ear (Any help on this would be greatly appreciated). This is the guy that I 'rescued' from an all bird-pet shop. Somebody had given him to the owner of the store because they could not have him where they were moving to. Of course, this guy didn't know the first thing about ferrets, and stuck him in a little 18x18x12 wire cage. He was being fed Iams DOG FOOD, and his nails were about 2 inches long!! He is a little jumpy around humans, and also is a little bit nippy, but just a little. I don't think that he was played with much as a kit, and is therefore not used to human play time. He gets along great with the other fuzzies, though. He is getting much better with the human play thingy too! Gets along great with: Samson, Seymour, Simba, Ginger, Alexander, and Suzie Q (everyone) Litter pan hit rate: 85% Alexander- 2 yr old LOS breeder male. Medium Cinnamon. Alex is still a whole male at this time, but he is slated to be neutered in Early Janurary. He has sired a total of four litters for Rose of LOS-Pennsylvania chapter (that is, if I remember right!). Now he is a normal fun ferret! :) Had our first experience with a *poof* a couple of days ago! Whew, hope that doesn't happen to much! Alex is real skittish around my wife and I. He is quick to run away and hide when we come in the room. He is slowly coming around, however. I mentioned with Seymour that he (Seymour) was the biggest of our guys. Alex is the heaviest (JUST shy of 4 pounds), but Seymour has about 2-3 inches on him. Gets along great with: Samson, Seymour, Simba, Ginger, Timon, and Suzie Q (everyone) Litter pan hit rate: 95% (only one miss in the four weeks that he has been with us!) Suzie Q- 3 month old Marshall Farm female. Medium chocolate blaze. Suzie is the un-questionable WILD child of the bunch! Scruffing has NO effect, NO! holds an equal amount of value to her, and she absolutely will NOT stand for any holding, kissing, snuggling, or cuddling nonsense! (A real 90's kind of woman!) She goes absolutely crazy over any of the other fuzzies. If someone else is up when she is, they try to hide before she realizes that she has an available playmate! All except for Ginger, that is. Those two girls are 75% of the time involved in some sort of wrestling match or some sort of mischief. I actually caught the two of them yesterday working in unison to get into trouble. Suzie was on the corner section of our Sectional sofa Throwing everything that she could down to Ginger, who of course promptly hid the various items in god only knows how many different hidey-holes! When I caught them, Ginger dove under the sofa and come WALKING around from the corner and just stopped and looked at Suzie as if to say "I told you not to do that, Suzie." She them looked up at me as if to say " I told her, dad, I told her that was wrong!" Gets along great with: Ginger, Seymour, Timon, and Simba. Is tolerated by: Samson and Alexander. Litter pan hit rate:45% (sigh, still working on this one too!) Just a side note here: I have noticed that the only real difference between the males and the females is in the cleanup of thier oopsies. The female's accidents are DEFINITELY a bigger headache to clean up, due to the fact that they urinate and defecate on the same spot of carpet, where the male's urine and stool are seperated by a couple of inches. The urine creates a soupy mess when trying to lift the stool off of the carpet with a paper towel. Sorry to be grossing anyone out, but this is one of the factors that most of my guys ARE guys. As a matter of fact, both of the girls that we have now were brought home by my wife. Don't get me wrong, I love the girls just as much as the guys! :) Scott Pearce and the Weasel Warriors Samson- "I really am a dog, dad!" Seymour- "I love ALL of my brothers and sisters so much!" Simba- "Watch the hair, Suzie!" Ginger- "Dad, let me take the new printer apart" Timon- "Hey, I can get one of those shiny things off of the tree, dad!" Alexander- "Hey Dad, POOF!" Suzie Q- "Dad, let me stuff Ginger IN the new printer for payback!" [Posted in FML issue 1418]