A Danger in the Home

By Mary Van Dahm

Six little ferrets in six loving homes. I received call after call this month from grieving owners. “No one was even sitting in the chair”, was the response from each one.

Recliner deaths were on a rise in June this year. Most of us figure that if we can keep people out of the chair while our ferrets are out playing, our pets are safe. We get lulled into a false sense of security when day by day goes by and nothing happens. Unfortunately it only takes one slip and our little friends can loose their lives.

Strangely enough, as mentioned before, no one was sitting in the chairs at the time of the pets’ demise. Apparently when the chairs were put into the upright positions, they were not checked to ensure that the expanding mechanisms were totally contracted. The ferrets during their course of play managed to jiggle the mechanisms enough that they did contract – trapping the ferrets and killing them.

We also had a call about a sofa bed death. This call was unusal ion that the ferret did not die inside the sofa bed, but rather under it. The metal frame that holds the mattress was very low to the ground. When someone either moved the sofa bed or sat on it, ferret happened to be under part of the metal frame and was trapped and suffocated.

Most of us will be lucky and nothing will happen, but why chance it? If you have a recliner bed or a sofa bed, keep your ferrets completely out of the room that these pieces of furniture are in. (Or get rid of these items completely!) It may take a little time and effor to block these rooms off, but it takes even less time for your ferret to get caught and killed in them.

Clumping Litter Danger

I know we have spoken about this before, but while I’m on the subject of household dangers, I want to remind you NOT to use clumpimg litter with your ferrets. Another death was reported to us this month of a ferret ingesting or inhaling clumping litter. You can see how it clumps when urine hits it. Just imagine what it does in your ferret’s stomach!