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Make sure the bathtub is dry and somewhat clean, then take one or more ferrets and place them in. Bandit loves the way the tub feels on his belly and will often lie there smiling. It makes for a great weezil war arena, sort of like a ferret colosseum ... To add even more excitement to the foray, place a couple of crinkly plastic grocery bags and a few ping pong balls in the tub as well, then watch the ferret frenzy begin! Bear will take a pocket tissue pack and 'hide' it somewhere. Blitz will take that same tissue pack and walk right past Bear with it in his mouth to a different spot. This goes on between all six ferrets, throughout the house, all the time. Finally, the tissue packs give out, the actual tissues fall amongst the foray of already collected packs, and we replace them while the ferrets are not looking. Nothing is sadder than the resigned but determined look on one of the ferret's little face when they see us take a tissue pack out of the carefully stacked pile and place it somewhere else. Sasha has gotten up from a dead sleep underneath a four-weezil pile of napping ferts to replace just one tissue pack after I 'thoughtlessly' removed one .... I had to blow my nose ... What was I thinking? 
Scattered throughout our place and especially in the ferret room are dozens of pocket tissue packs. Enjoyed by all, especially Bear and Blitz, tissue packs can be found in every nook and cranny of the ferret room: in boxes, cages, tubes, and under towels... Actually, we usually use towels for this game, although throw rugs and carpet remnants will do. All the ferrets love to jump on, chase, and ride towels that we drag along the floor. Sometimes they will climb all the way up to our hands while riding, dooking, and war dancing their ferrety heads off. Blitz finds it to be a victory if he can make it to my hands while being dragged down the hallway.... We use cardboard boxes as adjuncts to ferret cages inside the ferret room. James creates these vast cardboard castles, connecting various shapes and sizes of boxes to make for lots of ferrety fun. Even our cat Pepper enjoys exploring these boxes and fits herself into places we would have never dreamed she could... 
Sometimes we throw a big comforter over the ferret box fort and it is big enough to cover a good portion of the room. The ferrets love crawling into, out of, on, and under the hills and valleys that the blanket creates. The accompanying picture shows three of our ferrets having fun on the comforter, surrounded by toys and ferrety comforts of all shapes and sizes...Crinkly plastic bags from the grocery store or those large plastic bags from Target, KMart, etc. work the best for this ... There are many variations of this game. Basil enjoys just stomping around on plastic bags strewn all over the floor to get the air out of them. He also savors the feeling of the bag underneath him and will often burrow or sleep in them. Although it is possible, the likelyhood of ferrets suffocating from these types of bags are is somewhat minimal at best, but ferrets should be supervised at all times when they have access to and/or are playing with plastic bags, PERIOD. Similar to the Magic Carpet Ride, but using a throw or blanket from the couch... One of us grabs a blanket, tosses a ferret or two (or six, if possible!) on the couch, and drape the blanket over the ferrets, then off the ferrets, on, then off, etc... This almost guarantees a dooking-war-dancing fit displayed by all ferrets involved! Search and Seizure (followed by the Grab and Dash) : Pretty self-explanatory! This is an art form perfected by Bear. He has such an obsession with our computer mice that we have to hide them whenever Bear is out and about! ACTION GAMES
We fill a large, shallow plastic container with small garden pebbles and let the ferrets explore. They dig, dance, and otherwise play to their ferrety hearts delight!
Ferrets LOVE tubes; soft shell, hard plastic, cardboard, solid PVC ... and we have them all. The ferret room is set up with almost a complete circle around the room's parameter, connecting all three ferret cages to each other and the room itself. Races take place in every type of tube, even one that I tie in a knot (see picture!) |
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