Oh What A Ferret Mess!

Most ferret owners would say that a highlight of owning ferrets is the unexpected surprises they bring. And boy do ferrets ever bring a variety of surprises — some funny and some not-so-funny. Ferret people love to trade “disaster” stories about the occasional catastrophic messes ferrets make. Hearing these, you might believe that ferret people are seeking the mother-of-all-messes story!

My own worst ferret mess story involves the lovely subject of fecal matter. Our fuzzy friends may not be tidy, but ferrets are actually clean animals. A typical ferret doesn’t want to get anywhere near poop, and some ferrets won’t relieve themselves in a dirty litter box. But one day an anomaly entered my life, Blacky the ferret; we later renamed him, Blacky The Poop. Blacky didn’t mind touching poop. In fact, he relished the feeling of it squishing between his toes and loved to paw paint with it. One day he decided to use the entire ferret room floor as a canvas. He carefully adorned it with perfect, tiny, poopy footprints from one end to the other. “No, no, no, nooo!” I said when I saw his creation. I then collapsed to the floor in frustration and held my head.

© Courtesy Anne Kaelber Anne Kaelber's ferret River dug through the carpet and padding to get into the closet.

Unsupervised or escaped ferrets can be destructive sometimes. No one knows this better than Anne Kaelber of Arizona. An all-too-common and troublesome ferret behavior is that of carpet digging in front of closed doors. Some ferrets can’t resist the amazing, curious smells and sounds from the other side that drift beneath doorways. For a ferret, a crack means there is hope to get to a forbidden zone. Curiosity drove Kaelber’s tiny, female ferret, River, to begin a campaign to get to the other side of a closet door. After digging through the carpet and padding, she reached the slab foundation and wiggled through. She then enlarged the hole, which allowed Kaelber’s other ferrets to squeeze through.  “Imagine our unhappy surprise when we went to look for something in the closet — and found a ferret’s ‘litter box,’ plus the chaos any ferret wreaks on any unsupervised area! As for laughing about it? No. Not yet. It’s been two years, and we still cringe every time we think of what that cost us.”

© Courtesy of Susie Riddle. Susie Riddle's ferrets enjoyed taking Tupperware out of her cupboards and creating a mess daily, until Riddle ferret-proofed the cupboards.

© Courtesy of Mandy Marks Mandy Marks' ferret Penny managed to make a mess by diving into a bag of potting soil.

Another home-wrecking activity that some ferrets enjoy involves going into other forbidden zones, such as cabinets. Susie Riddle of Texas is the director and owner of WeezleWings Ferret Sanctuary. She used to sell Tupperware to put herself through nursing school and has amassed quite a collection. Her ferrets’ fascination with getting into her kitchen cabinets resulted in a colossal plastic amusement park in her kitchen. “I had to pay to have those doors ferret-proofed,” Riddle said, “because my back and seven ruptured discs couldn’t take picking up 4,000 pieces of Tupperware every day.”

Although digging is a natural behavior of ferrets, many are well-behaved in a home. But even the best-behaved ferret will roll in fresh, lovely dirt if given the opportunity. Lorisa Zatz of Florida tells a story about one of her little pet ferrets, Rascal, that got into a potted plant in her parent’s house, “My dad found her, but it was too late. Most of the dirt was on the ground and she was completely dirty,” Zatz said. “It all got cleaned up, and Rascal was banned from the porch. Now we all look back on it and laugh.”

Mandy Marks of Louisiana has a ferret that once found something even better than a potted plant. She discovered the ultimate, earthy wonderland. “My little Penny decided that it would be a great idea to go head-first into a bag of potting soil,” Marks said. “I still dread cleaning up that mess.”

Eric Kunz discovered that a ferret doesn’t always have to be out of its cage to find trouble. This resident of Washington State tells about his eye-rolling experience when his ferret, Jynx, decided to redecorate his cage. “One morning the bottom tray of the cage was covered in food and litter with the pan upside down in the middle,” Kunz said. “Needless to say since the litter was everywhere and the box was overturned, it was quite a mess to clean up before heading off to work.” This is a common and classic ferret mess.

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