The Schubert Site: Stories about a sable ferret, a tabby cat, and a full and joyful life.
A gallery of adorable ferret pictures
When Schubert broke into our apartment
Why you should think twice before getting a ferret
The day Schubert caught a "mouse"
Schubert and the big red balloon
The Day Schubert Caught a Mouse (Ferrets and Technology.)
Most ferrets steal keys or shiny things. Schubert had a penchant for technology. Maybe it was because of the way that he noticed it to be so valuable to me. Maybe it was just that there was so much of it lying around. Almost all of it was small and in fun little crinkly plastic baggies. There were the plastic parts to our satellite setup, and the little bags of screws that seemed to vanish before I could use them to install a new CD or DVD burner.
And there was his favorite place to hide all of it: behind my computer or printer. The articles I've read say that ferrets and computers are usually a bad combination; they can chew wires and electrocute themselves or at the very least cause damage to the wires. I never caught Schubert chewing back there and I never found any evidence of it. I figure maybe he liked it back there because it was warm.
Schubert also liked another component of some of the technology I have around here: the soft rubbery buttons of phones, printers, and the like. That truly is bad for a ferret to have access to: rubber can cause blockages that can sometimes only be corrected with surgery.
Schubert had never shown interest in my Wacom Tablet before, but I had been carrying it with me to and from work for the past few weeks when we lived in Laurinburg. Anything in my bag from work was especially interesting because it was new and different and dropped carelessly in so many locations around the house. My graphics tablet has a cordless mouse with a rubber scroll wheel. I've never caught him trying it at any point since, but one evening he seemed determined to hide that cordless mouse.
I didn't even see him grab it from my bag, but the next thing I saw was my ferret scrambling franticly down the hall with the cordless mouse. Schubert was a medium-sized ferret, and this mouse is the same size and weight as your average mouse. My tiny little animal was carrying an article twice the size of his head in his mouth, careening towards the studio, banging the mouse against the floors, and the sides of the walls. It had me laughing so hard that I almost forgot how expensive my Wacom Tablet was.
Almost. As soon as I remembered, I had the mouse out of Schubert's mouth and safely placed with the rest of the important computer equipment. Ferrets are carnivores (who love rubber.) Be careful with your mouse!