A Ferret¹s Tale
by Cheryl Nordgulen

10:53 AM  
August 16, 1996

She arrived in a paper box filled with shredded newspaper.  It was the summer of 1985.  My friend, Nita Ann, walked into the house grinning from ear to ear and said ³Here she is, Cheryl!².
I bent over the box, wondering where she was!  I could not see anything but shredded newspapers.  All at once, this tiny brown being who was only six inches long leaped up through the shredded newspaper.  I drew back, startled, and then stared in delight at the baby ferret, for whom I already had a name, Mijbil, after the otter who was the star of ³Ring of Bright Water.²  Ferrets and otters are related in as much both belong to the family Mustiladae, which also includes badgers, skunks, weasels, fishers, martens, and wolverines.
Nita Ann had stayed at our house long enough to give me details on Mij¹s baby diet, which consisted of modified milk, baby cereal and strained baby meats. 
 After Nita had left, doubts began to assail me.  How could I keep this tiny, six inch long, 8 ounce, mite alive.  She was so tiny!  I had purchased a book on keeping a pet ferret.  It had some good advice but also raised more fears.  Ferrets are susceptible to colds and flu and can get these diseases from humans.  The cats might think she was a rat.  Would she be okay while I was at work and she was in her cage.  On and on I mentally chewed over my fears.  But, I needn¹t have worried.  The tiny mite put the cats in their places right away.  They learned to respect her and give her a wide berth. They didn¹t like her odor.  And she aggressively pursued the cats, teaching them that she was something to be avoided. 
Mijbil was the first ferret I had ever owned or even known.  My son Wes was captivated by her ebullient personality and promptly stated that she belonged to him.  I was very happy that he was so taken with her.  Wes was afflicted by several handicaps, epilepsy, Osteogenesis Imperfecta (the brittle bone defect) and strabismus (wandering eye).  He had few friends and was a very lonely child.
Mijbil had no problem with his handicaps.  He was hers, to love and play with.  He began immediately to train her to ride on his shoulder.  After several attempts, during which Wes patiently rescued her from falling, she got the idea of how to hang on and ride on a shoulder.  It was a rare moment, after that, in which she was not to be found on his shoulder.
  She slept all day in her cage and was ready for fresh food and fun when Wes got home from school.
Nita had brought a very roomy cage for Mijbil to live in.  She had a shoebox for her bed and a water bottle and food dish.  She stayed in Wes¹s room until she was about 5 months old.  And then, the seldom used cage, was moved to the living room, so she could be in it when necessary, but also be part of the family.
That first day soon wore Mij out, and she fell asleep in her bed.  She slept, and slept, and slept for hours.  I became alarmed and tried to awaken her.  I picked her up.  She was totally limp.  I shook her.  I chirped in her ear.  Nothing worked.  I was afraid she was comatose and dying.  I checked my books.  No help there, so I called Nita Ann.
She laughed and then told me that ferrets slept like they were in comas.  I was not to worry.  MIj would sleep some twenty hours each day.  But when she was awake, she would be a tiny dynamo.  She would be a thief, stealing socks, gloves and any other thing that caught her fancy.  She would hide these treasures in her ³stash² pile which was moved quite frequently.
At any rate, I hung up the phone, reassured for the moment.  As long as I had the books in my hands, I might as well reread them.  Both books stated that ferrets do not climb.  That was good!  They also stated that she should have regular baths, be spayed as soon as the veterinarian could perform the operation and that it would be a good idea to have her descented.  Descented????  Mij had a slightly musky odor like drying corn husks.  I liked it.  I decided not to put her through the extra surgery and I have never regretted it.  She smells as sweetly today as she smelled as a kit,  and from this personal perfume, she got her first nickname ³Muskmelon².
Late one evening, while we were playing with her, we decided she needed a name as long as her body.  She officially became Mijbil Muskmelon Fitchferret Nordgulen.  Wes created a little song for her to the tune of  ³I¹m a Little Teapot².
Mijbil¹s Song
³She¹s a little muskie-melon, long and sweet,
Here is her nose  (touching Mijbil¹s nose)
And here are her Feet.  (touching her hind feet)
Love my little muskie-melon, yes I do,
Love my little muskie-melon, yes I do.²
For the almost eight years of her life, this little song was sung to Mij each time she was picked up to be loved.   She certainly didn¹t understand the words, but she was very able to understand the emotion.
As Mij grew older, the door to her cage was propped open, and was never shut again, except during the time right after her spaying, or when small children were in the house.  Now she began to sleep with me in my waterbed.    Whoops!!  One day I came home and found the mattress oozing water in several places.   I patched the mattress and then covered it with heavy quilts that her sharp little teeth could not penetrate.  No more holes.   Her favorite place to sleep was under the comforter, but on top of the blanket.  The bedroom became her sanctuary when I drilled a ferret sized hole in the door.  The door could be closed and she could slip through to nap safely without interruption.
Mij did not pay attention to the assertion that ferrets do not climb.  Cats climb.  Mij saw the cats climb.  So, Mij climbed too.  In my closet, Mij would climb up my garments to the hangers and then hitch herself from there up on to the closet shelves.  She used the cooling rack behind the refrigerator to get to the top of that appliance.  From there, it was an easy hop to the top of the water heater.  She would grab at tablecloths and use them to climb up on the table.   Because Mij learned to climb, she taught the ferrets that arrived much later in my household this trick also, and they passed it on to the next arrivals.   So, all of our ferrets have accepted climbing as a natural function of ferrets, thanks to little Mij.
About one month after Mij joined the family, four-month old Arafel, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi arrived.  I worried again over how these two would get along, but I needn¹t have wasted my energies.
Mij quickly informed Arafel that she, Mij, was abolute ruler of the house and that Arafel would do well to remember the fact.  Mij loved to tiptoe up to the sleeping puppy and nibble  on her toes.  Up the puppy would bounce, and off they would go on a game of chase, with Arafel always the one being pursued.  When Mij caught up, she would grab one of Arafel¹s ears and hang on tightly.  And so, she also became known as ³Arafel¹s Earring².  She never pierced the puppy¹s ear or even so much as scratched it.  But she could sure hang on, bouncing along as Arafel ran this way and that trying to shake her off.   By the end of a year, both kit and pup had grown up enough to drop this game from their repertoire.
Ferrets are latrine animals, like cats.  They prefer to excrete their wastes in the same place.  They can be trained to litterboxes, but have to have a special, non-sand type litter.  Or they can be trained to use newspapers placed in corners.  Mij learned to use her papers well, only causing one day of distress, when I found that she, had on her own, decided that the hollow place behind the waterbed drawers was the place to go.  The entrance to this haven was quickly boarded up and no more accidents happened.
Never one to accept defeat though, Mij figured out that if she pulled the drawers open, she could get back to her secret place.  Opening the heavy drawers was a real task for this tiny mite, but she managed.  A week later, another clean[up later, and the drawers were filled with books.  Now they were too heavy for her to open.  From that moment on, she was a model of cleanliness in her personal habits, and this did not change until she was very old and very sick.
I have already mentioned her thievery.  Ferrets excel at stealing items, and unlike the packrat, they leave nothing in exchange for their ill-gotten gains.  Mij was a princess of thieves.  Sock, gloves, and anything made of rubber, matchbox cars, stolen from Wes, were absolute treasures because of their little rubber tires.
Her biggest heist, however, was the bathroom plunger, a cornucopia of rubber.   I had used the plunger and set it aside to dry.  I was in the living room watching television when I heard this banging and clattering in the rear of the house.  I jumped up and ran back, expecting anything but what I saw.  Mij, in true ferret fashion, was attempting to pull the plunger through her entrance hole in my bedroom door.  As Mij was holding the plunger at right angles to the 3² hole, she didn¹t have much luck.  But she kept trying for over fifteen minutes, while Wes and I laughed and laughed at her efforts.
Ferrets have some peculiar food tastes.  They like things like cod liver oil.  Did I say like?  They are absolutely mad about it.  There is a product called Ferretone, made up from fishy, fatty acids, that they would do anything at all for.  This is a food supplement and can also be used to train them to do various tricks.  It is the reward of their choice.  We would put a few drops on the palms of our hands, and Mij, with eyes tightly closed and nose wrinkled up, would use her raspy little tongue to lick up this epicurean delight.  And, she wouldn¹t stop until the last molecule was ingested.  My palm would feel as if I had sandpapered it.
Mij developed tastes for certain different foods.  She was passionate about iceberg lettuce and cola drinks.  Anyone might walk in with a cola in hand while Mij was sleeping soundly.  But within minutes she would be in the room, nose pointed skyward, sniffing the air and zeroing in on the cola.  If it was in reach, she would have the can or bottle on its side and eagerly lap up the contents, oblivious t o my screams of dismay.  Whatever Mij wanted, Mij got.  When offered her lettuce, Mij forgot her manners and was apt to try to take a finger along with the lettuce.  She also liked mocha, grapes, fresh green beans, and red licorice.  She would also steal the dog¹s biscuits and stash them under the refrigerator, where she could gnaw on them in peace.
At about one year of age, Mij began to develop cataracts on both eyes, a common ailment with some lines of ferrets.  Our veterinarian assured us that if we used a little common sense, Mij would get along just fine.  So, the furniture stayed in the same place for the rest of her life.  When cleaning day came around, she was put in her cage for her own safety.  At first, she could still see some light, but somewheres around her sixth year, she became almost totally blind.  We realized this one night when we took a flash picture of her and she went into the ferret dance of delight.  She could SEE that light.  She also responded to very bright sunlight when we took her outside or when it shone through a window.
The cataracts really didn¹t slow her down very much at all.  She still climbed, still took flying leaps, and still rode on the shoulder of her best friend, Wes.  She liked to ride my shoulder when she went for car rides, and caused a lot of excitement at intersections where we would be waiting for the light to change.  She enjoyed making a visit to a senior health care live-in facility.  Mij was gentle and loved to be petted, and so was an ideal pet for the elders to hold and stroke.  She was also part of a petting exhibition at the local county fair.  Adults and children were totally intrigued by this small ambassadress for ferret kind.  
Although Mij had been spayed, she still had a chance at mothering.  Her half-sister, Hilfy, joined our household at the ripe old age of six weeks.  Mij was overjoyed.  She had a baby to care for.  She kept Hilfy clean and warm, taught her the right foods to eat, and taught her how to climb and where all the goodies were.  When Mij was five years old, little R2D2 came to our house.  He was eight weeks old at the time.  Mij mothered him also.  She was so patient with the young ferrets.  They could do no wrong.  She never seemed to get angry at all their antics.
Mij would curl into a doughnut shape in my hand when I told her to ³make a doughnut².  She would kiss, when asked to do so.  Another trick she loved was having a balloon to chase and pop.  We blew up a lot of balloons for her.  Wes, after a birthday party one day, brought home a helium filled balloon.  Of course, it went straight to the ceiling and stayed there.  Out of sight and out of mind.  A few days later, blind little Mij wandered into the living room, all excited and nose in the air.  It took us humans a while to figure out what she was excited about.   It was the balloon, hanging up there by the ceiling.  She could smell the rubber!  The balloon slowly descended over a period of several days.  The day it reached about eighteen inches above the floor, Mij went into ecstacies of delight.  She bounced and bounced, trying to nab that pesky balloon until she was so tired she fell asleep on the floor under it.  The next day, the balloon was within her reach and she got it and popped it.  I think she was very satisfied.
Our Wes, whom she adored, developed severe mental problems due to uncontrolled seizures.  He died in 1991, at the age of eighteen.  Poor little Mij.  She was so disconsolate.  So very sad.  She was getting old herself now, being over six years of age.
In 1993, Mij had suddenly developed lymphosarcoma.  She fought the cancer long and hard, losing a little ground each day, but ferretwise, never complaining.  The veterinary worked with me to help her have as long and as comfortable a life as we could give her.
She died in March of 1993, almost four years ago of the time I am typing this.  When she got to the point of stopping in midstride and hitching in pain, I knew it was time to let her go.  I know that sweet little Mij found her Wes and that they are happy together for all time.    They are both still desperately missed in this household.  A whole new generation of ferrets live with us now, each an individual with personal tastes and habits.  But Mij was the first, the one who opened my eyes to the delight of living in the company of ferrets.  And I was so lucky that my very first ferret was sweet, gentle Mij.