marley ~ dog or ferret? you decide

i'm starting to think that our ferret marley, pictured with me at left, was a dog in a previous life. way back in 2008 when i got my first ferrets i was told by a ferret owner (i say owner in this case because this person was not a ferrent. he did not take care of his ferrets the way they should've been cared for. that, however, is a tale for another time). so i was told by him that ferrets don't eat people food. which, until i met marley, appeared to be a true statement. everything i'd ever read online stated that ferrets imprint on food when they are kits, often before they even make it to the pet store.

often it is difficult, if not near impossible, to get an older ferret to eat new treats or switch to a different food. if the manufacturer makes changes to the food formula it can cause a ferret to stop eating the food they were previously eating. for this reason many ferrents will mix two or more brands of food so that if any ingredients are changed their fuzzies will have less of a problem with the change. one of the ferrets i sometimes babysit, dexter, is a super picky eater. the duk soup that my ferrets love he doesn't even recognize as food.

when i got marley in 2009 i figured she would be like the rest of my crew (which at that time consisted of cassie, sunny d, nyddah, doodle, & podo). the rest of them only ate their ferret food, ferret treats, and the occasional piece of twizzlers. twizzlers make all mouths happy. nyddah would wake up from a sound sleep at the smell of a new bag of twizzlers being opened. just like her momma nyddah especially enjoyed black licorice. she's pictured at right snacking on a small piece of black licorice i'm holding for her.

anything else that i would eat my ferrets would investigate, but pretty much take no notice at all. they may come up and sniff my plate, but if i wasn't eating their food, which i wasn't, they would move along. even though ferrets are carnivores they never even saw chicken, turkey, or other meats which graced my plate as food. yes, chicken is often the first, and main ingredient, in ferret food, ferrets don't see real chicken as food. they really wouldn't know what to do with an actual live chicken.

marley had been living in our home for maybe a day or two when i was sitting on the couch eating some canned ravioli. she came up to me and i did what i always did with the ferrets. i held out my dish so she could sniff it and then move along. ferrets are very persistent and playing keep away with your plate just makes them want to know what's on it even more. i had learned with the other five that the best course of action was to let them smell my food, decide they weren't interested, so they would move along and i could eat in peace. i nearly fell over when i held out my dish and she stuck her nose right in and pulled out a ravioli with every intention of stealing and consuming the pasta. i managed to grab her quick and retrieve the ravioli before my carpet was stained with pasta sauce.

the ravioli incident was not an isolated event. any time i eat, even now, marley likes to sidle up to me and see if she wants a nibble of whatever i happen to have. some of her favorites are pizza, spaghetti o's, scrambled eggs, bacon, guacamole, and ice cream. marley really really loves her ice cream, but sadly she is lactose intolerant so i have to severely limit her dairy intake. if she has too much dairy she throws up, has diarrhea, or both. i haven't really looked but i'm pretty sure there aren't any ferret medications to help digest lactose since, well, ferrets don't eat dairy.

she's started teaching some of the others about the joy of human food. lucy, pictured right with marley sharing ferret vitamins, is now very fond of pizza and burrito bar night. lucy isn't as big a guacamole fan as marley is, but i'm sure that given time she will also be begging for a nibble when she sniffs guac on my plate.

most of our gang still shuns human food as not fit for the ferret palate. but two of our ladies are now turning into quite the foodies when it comes to human cuisine. every time i see marley begging for something it makes me think that perhaps before she was a ferret she was a dog. or maybe even a goat. or perhaps even a human. going from human to ferret, would that be a step down or a step up on the evolutionary ladder?