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I acquired my first ferret shortly after I got married. We lived in an apartment, and very much wanted a pet, but a dog was out of the question at the time due to space considerations, and I'm allergic to cats. After a bit of research, we ended up in a pet store buying a ferret.

Archimedes proved to be the first in a long line of ferret pals. All of them have had their particular quirks, and all provided endless entertainment.

If you have a ferret, you hardly need anything else to amuse yourself. Well, except during the seventeen to eighteen hours they spend sleeping instead of engaging in amusing antics. When awake, ferrets are constantly in motion, often bouncing straight up and down off all four feet, mouths open, and chittering. They sound like they're laughing. Often I've wished I could enjoy life as much as my ferrets seemed to.

Each of my ferrets has had its own brand of goofy. Archimedes was an escape artist. We kept him in a corner of our apartment, not in a cage, but blocked off in an area where he had room to play. Except apparently it wasn't big enough, because he would sneak out when we weren't home, or in the middle of the night. Once we left the apartment for the day, and when we came back, he had escaped from his corner and gotten into the cupboards, where he dumped over his bag of food. Then he carried a half-dozen sponges into his area and went back to sleep. So he had escaped, gone in and out six times, then went back in and sacked out. We never quite figured out how he managed it, but obviously it was tiring.

Our second ferret, Tasha, liked to sleep inside my shirt. She also liked to walk on a leash, but when a car went by she would be scared enough to run up the inside of my sweatpants leg to hide. Which of course led to some awkward moments. Another ferret, Dax, whom we acquired as a baby, kept turning up with singed hair. We finally determined he was getting inside the hot water heater. We had to cover the opening with chicken wire until he got too big to fit inside, all the time wondering how he'd managed not to kill himself.

If you want to see a ferret at his hysterical best, give him a bath. When a ferret comes out of the bathtub, he will run around the house like a loon, stopping periodically to rub his whole body along the carpet. Our current pet ferret, Spike, puts on a particularly good show. He also likes to walk outside on a leash and scrub himself all over the dirt. Which leads directly to a bath, and the ensuing crazy ferret antics. He's goofy in other ways, too. Once I watched him stick his head in a glove, then run around trying to get it off. Once he did, he stuck his head in it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. I laughed so hard I cried.

This, I think, is the most endearing trait of a ferret, and the reason I've owned so many. They know how to enjoy themselves. Regardless of what they're doing, whether it's sleeping or playing or tormenting a leather glove, they go at it whole-heartedly, with all the energy they can muster in their tiny bodies. Sometimes cuddly, sometimes not, but always entertaining, the ferret is the embodiment of joie de vivre.

This article is dedicated to Archimedes, Tasha, Fermi, Sisko, Dax, and Spike.

Learn more about this author, Katriena Knights.
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