Jake & Jasper: A Ferret Tale Official Movie Trailer from Alison Parker on Vimeo.
Bun has learned all about treats, and he’s very adept at picking up signals from me about when they are forthcoming. The first step to photographing your ferret is to condition him to treat-giving culture. If you can teach your ferret to respond to stimuli, then you can use that stimuli to make him do things he doesn’t want to do…like hold still for more than one second. That’s step one of photographing ferrets.
Of course the main reason you should train your ferret with treats is so he knows to come when you whistle. That’s so maybe you can retrieve him when he runs away. That’s the theory anyway. When Pig Warrior Ferret ran away a few years ago at Halloween, she came back but it wasn’t because I was whistling. In fact, I’d spent hours whistling for her after I realized she was gone, but she either didn’t hear it or was too confused to respond. She came back to get her favorite toy, a snorkel, which I’d put by the side door next to some of her bedding. But maybe the whistle worked, because when I saw her I held out a raising and whistled and lured her into the house that way.
So anyway, whistle training is good for your ferret in case he gets outside and you have to search for him. But a whistle can also make a ferret stop and think for a moment, during which time you hopefully press the shutter button and get a ferret portrait.
Bun in this picture was busy checking Ben’s teeth for abnormalities like does every other day. Since he is a very cuddly ferret, he kind of lay still for a moment to think about life, while being held. So I figured,
nice time for a picture.
By the time I got my camera ready, three seconds later, he was fidgeting again. So I took a cheerio (loves ‘em) and whistled and he froze, thinking about it. Snap, and voila.
Sorry, that was just a reference to internet silliness with the walrus-bucket saga stuff. What I really wanted to talk about is ferrets and buckets. If you didn’t know this already, ferrets have strange reactions to large bowls and buckets. By strange I mean after encountering a large plastic bowl or bucket, a ferret will do one of two things:
- climb in and writhe around and do an otter impersonation by rolling onto his back and looking up at you with limp little arms resting on his chest.
- put front feet in, if it’s small enough, and start digging furiously like he’s trying to escape a mortal enemy by tunneling underground
But no matter what, your ferret will want to climb inside a bucket when he sees it. My theory is that he thinks it’s a hole and he’s got to get in and see where it goes. Bun, pictured here, loves buckets even more than the other ferrets. You’ve seen him climb into the garbage can…
In this shot, Bun has just woken up and found the bucket, newly placed in that spot. He’s investigating and will soon heave himself up by doing a pullup using his strong little brown arms. Then he’ll balance on the rim, lowering his front body into the “hole”, trying to anchor himself with his hind legs. Eventually momentum will take over and he’ll fall into the bucket ungracefully, despite his plans to carefully lower himself down.
And here’s the actual problem for ferret owners. Bun got stuck in that bucket, and I was really glad I was home to get him out when he got bored and wanted out. What if I’d gone away for a week and left the bucket there? It would be a Baby Jessica in the Well situation, all over again. Horrors.
Sep 292011
Ferrets can’t wait to get up in the morning and see what’s new. It’s so adorable, all that optimism right away. You can see it in the way they scamper out of bed, hit the litter box, and run out of the bedroom all perky and excited. Pig does her daily perimeter run, sniffing all around the edges of the apartment, even before she hits the litter box. That’s how excited she is to see what’s new. Hippie rushes for the “magic spot”, which is a spot on the kitchen floor where I put treats for ferrets. Bun runs right up to me for some love and perhaps a treat why yes I’ll take one.
The real joy is when there’s a new box on the floor near the door, waiting to go out to the recycling bin. If a ferret can get himself inside a new box, then it’s going to be a great day, in his mind. All the better if the other two wake up at the same time and discover the box but he’s already claimed it! Pure ecstasy!
Well maybe that explains why Hippie’s new favorite bedding is a Cheerios box. He fought hard, defended it and won. And let me tell you, Bun really wants those boxes too so it’s a pretty vicious scene when it comes to certain boxes. The Cheerio box also the perfect size for sleeping. We cut little doors in two sides just large enough for Hippie to slip through and get inside for some serious napping. We put an old T-shirt inside and now have the perfect ferret bed, at no cost whatsoever. Hippie loves to sleep with his head sticking out the front door. He also does this when sleeping under the couch. His head pokes out in front.
Readers may or may not know that Hippie is extremely fat. He doesn’t even have a ferret shape, really. His lower abdomen juts out on both sides evenly, like he’s got a huge apple in there. And it’s not for lack of exercise. He, Bun and Pig are cageless ferrets, which means they run around free in our home. He has to cross large areas of the apartment to get to the important parts like his Cheerios box ferret bed, his water bowl, his magic spot in the kitchen, etc. He’s just a large ferret, in spite of all the running around he does.
The funny thing is that because Hippie lacks a slim, ferret shape, he gets stuck in the Cheerios box door we cut for him. He gets in as far as the abdomen and then has to push and push and push to get beyond that. But he eventually makes it and then he’s inside his own personal Cheerios heaven.
"I've fixed these wires...what can I get into next?"
- put the litter box next to where they sleep
- you may have to control where they sleep so the litter box can be nearby
- the first thing you do when you get a clean new litter box is to put a little ferret poop in the back corner
- Simply removing chunks from scoopable litter isn’t enough for ferrets’ fine sense of smell. get pellet litter
- even then, you’ll still have to wash the box every so often and get totally new litter…then repeat step #3
- put newspaper in front of the box because they like to rub their butts on the floor when they come out
- also, if the box gets full, they’ll have a tendency to go in front of the box so again, a newspaper “apron” is good
- if there are large areas of your house where the ferrets can run free, you’ll either have to cordon off those areas when you’re not there, or have a litter box there too, since ferrets will only travel a certain distance to a box
- ferrets don’t want to go to the bathroom where they sleep or where they eat, so by occasionally putting an extra water bowl or some bedding from where they sleep in off-limits areas, this will deter them from going in those parts of your house
- having pet ferrets run all around the house may not be for everyone, but you’ll have happier, well-adjusted ferrets and they will be extremely entertaining to watch
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