Ferrets are forever using their noses to guide them through the world.  If a window is opened, it’s at least an hour’s worth of exciting new things to whiff.  Hippy got a leg up onto the sill and he’s catching some whiffs right now.

In fact, ferrets have a very keen sense of smell, and they use it a lot to seek out fresh water.  I’ve seen Pig, one of our ferrets, a girl, run across the room and stop in her tracks, smelling something.  It’s just a bowl of fresh water I’d put down earlier.  They can smell fresh water vs. old water!

Closeup of Bun

This is Bun, who’s about a year old.  Bun doesn’t live in a cage and he lives with two other ferrets who also roam free inside our apartment.  Point is, he’s very active, curious, and hardly ever sits still, and he’s very in tune with every single movement I and my boyfriend make.  Any new sound, and he’s there to investigate.  I crouch down to his level (e.g. for this picture), and he trots over to see what I’m up to.

To ferrets, small mechanical noises represent awesome potential for discovery and mischief.  The inner workings of my Canon Rebel Xsi produce tiny sounds that will draw a ferret away from whatever he or she is doing, finding the potential for discovery simply irresistible.

That’s what Bun is doing.   He was actually very involved in trying to catch wooden beads that were swinging at the end of the cord to the venetian blinds.  But the camera sounds made him drop everything and rush over, coming up to the point where my camera had trouble focusing on everything.

And that is why it’s very hard to capture a ferret on camera and have the picture come out clear and sharp.  And using the flash, well let’s just say using the flash in a dark ferret corner means you will have pictures of what look like opossums.

When Pig was young, she was so big and aggressive we actually thought for a day or two the pet store was mistaken and she was really a male ferret.  Pig bounded everywhere she went and loved to play fight.  She also thumped her tail, which we read was a male behavior.  What she lacked in concentration and booksmarts, she made up for in pure warrior strength.

What’s this about tail thumping, you say?  I’d never seen it until Pig came along.  We have long mailing tubes which ferrets just love to scurry into when play fighting.  Pig will sit inside a tube when being chased by humans, and vibrate her tail back and forth.  It makes a thumping sound, and according to what we read, this is male behavior.  Pig is our little Amazon Warrior Ferret!

Pig isn’t afraid of anything, even though she now lives with two adults and two male ferrets who are of course twice as large as she is.  She attacks them all, full on, nothing held back.  She is unrelentless and thorough in her mission to sublimate every member of the household.  When Pig, Warrior Ferret gets worked up, everyone watch out!