Owning a ferret in of itself is an adventure. Just having one of the happy little weasels bouncing around your home can keep you on your toes for some time. Try owning five and I use the term "own" loosely as they tend to really own you.
I started with two ferrets, Rockie and Jasmine, but unfortunately, around Halloween Jasmine succumbed to anemia and was taken from me. Rockie was devastated, but he survived. He was very large for a ferret and very dumb. He was still smarter than the average dog, but still not all that bright. I think it had to do with him climbing up on high surfaces and forgetting how he got there. His usual method of egress was to take a nose dive at the ground. There must have been some brain damage in there somewhere.
One evening I took him to visit a friend that had two other ferrets, but much to my surprise I found out that my friend had acquired two more little furballs to care for. They were being kept on his back porch in a rather long cage that allowed them a lot of space to move when they were actually in the cage.
Living in Florida, I warned my friend that the back porch won't be the best place for them once the warmer months start (in Florida, this is around March), so he decided it might be best if I watched them for a while. All of a sudden my ferret population increased to five.
I now had five wonderful ferrets to care for:
Rockie: (Sable) The aforementioned big, strong, and quite dumb ferret.
Ar-Kahn: (Sable) The oldest of the brood. Very intelligent and very good at hiding and beating up the others. Although, he wasn't that large he never let that stop him he was a ferret, after all.
Klore-Ox: (albino) Like many albino ferrets, he was a little weaker than the rest. He made up for it with a very mean attitude. Still, he liked to be held and bathed and was fun to have around the others.
Ulysses: (Butterscotch) He was a very large ferret even larger than Rockie; but, this was mostly because he liked to eat a lot. Most of his six pounds of body weight seemed to be fat. He didn't really bounce around like normal ferrets. He was more prone to slinking along purposely.
Mephistopheles: (Sable) Small (slightly larger than Ar-Kahn), and extremely sweet. He was the gentlest of the crew and always was ready to be picked up and held. This tended to get him picked on a lot by Rockie and Ar-Kahn.
Over the year that they were together, they all grew to be fast friends, and when they were released the house became this bizarre little ballet of brown, white, and tan shapes whizzing around the floor. I learned to sit at my desk with my feet up out of fear of getting my toes bit off. I quickly found that I had to keep my boots up pretty high because every night before going to work I had to dedicate at least twenty minutes to finding them. Every time I figured out where they were they would just find some place else to hide them. To this day I'm not sure which one kept stealing them, but I suspect it was Ar-Kahn.
When the cooler months came, I decided to move in with the friend that put the four ferrets into my care. As I was moving my furniture I started to realize that they were not only great at hiding things, but they were spectacular hunters. In many of their favorite hiding places I would find bits of mice that they didn't feel like eating. I found this disturbing, disgusting, and amazing at the same time.
Eventually, they would all go their own ways and find their way back to where all ferrets come from and I would go on to own seven more of the little weasels (not at once! The most I would later have would be three), but I can honestly say that the most fun was having five of them completely running my house. Owning one ferret is never enough, two is ideal, but five is a perfect chance to test your own sanity.