To the person who has given up on their bitey ferret. I'm not as experienced as many on the list but it seems that some ferrets just are nippy and stay that way. Biting as someone mentioned (drawing blood) is a bit different and hopefully someday your ferret will learn "bite inhibition" (in dogs this means being able to regulate their mouth/bite so as not to hurt). I agree that the negative responses (nose slapping) propagated, often by uninformed pet store employees (at least in my case) do not work. I am however a big sissy about being bitten. That very good advice of not jerking back when bitten but gently pushing your finger into their mouth along with a hiss is great as it is immediate and directly associated to the bite by the ferret - but I often react and jerk back. So though I know most people don't agree I'll throw this out. Constant handling is often the best cure for biting. Pick up scratch, put down, pick up treat put down - constantly over and over. Since I'm a sissy I do this with yes, dare I say it, garden gloves. I was nailed directly through them once with a rescue with a broken/split very sharp tooth but usually it helps. I stay away from leather because it excites some ferrets quite a bit. Without gloves I think my nervousness transmits itself itself to the ferret which isn't good. I didn't sound like you had a tough time with being bitten like I do, just that you were sad. I hope that with constant handling, as the ferret gets older it stops drawing blood. But if you find yourself not handling the ferret because of the blood drawing you might give it a shot. As for Ed's thoughts on reasons to not fix ferrets - one thing not mentioned as that females will, if not fixed (and not bred) DIE. Unless you limit female ownership to breeders, a lot of females are going to die slow miserable deaths, bleeding out of every orifice. That's enough of a reason for me to say that fixing ferrets is very important. (As if pet overpopulation wasn't enough). Mary, Boris and Giesela and Booker the dog [Posted in FML issue 2395]