Röskva's arrival

At the end of July, I finally decided that a new, young ferret could be a worthwhile addition as I could see that Roxane became more and more restless and really could use someone younger than the others to play with.

So I went to a family which had gotten kits, four girls. One was a bit reserved and didn't want to have much to do with me, one spent most of the time playing in other places. That left two who both seemed to like me. One tried to bite pretty hard, so I choose the other one. This may have been a mistake.

When we came home with her, everything went just fine to start with, with her running after the others wanting to play with them. Then it started to go badly, as the others didn't like the attention and used a bit of violence to get themselves some rest.

The second mistake may have been to let Röskva come home when she was as young as she was, because she had no way whatsoever of defending herself from the others. Previously, my experience has been that the younger they are when they come home, the smaller the risk that they'll be victims on a large scale. Roxane was just a bit older when she came here and while she fought with the others quite a bit, nobody had the upper hand so to say, so just like when Rustan and Carmen came and I had arranged for a week off from work, it wasn't needed. Carmen was just as small when she came, but did well anyway, but then she had a brother.

This time, I thought everything would go well, so I hadn't taken a week off. Not that I think it would have made a difference.

In short order Röskva started screaming whenever one of the others came near, so apparently the situation became untolerable for her. Therefore I arranged for her to stay with my parents for a while letting her grow larger and able to defend herself better.

Several times she was brought here to get used to the others and maybe fight back enough to gain some measure of respect. No success at all: Even Rustan who's usually very laid back started attacking her with not a whole lot of discrimination; He even bit my arm at one time.

Alison mostly gave her a quick bite in the neck and then ran away (I know she's always been scared of all new ferrets I've brought home), so her as a problem I discounted.
Carmen is easily deterred by someone screaming at the top of her lungs, so she seldom actually got to bite her, but when she does she doesn't let go.
Roxane actively goes hunting for Röskva and jumps after her even in quite impossible situations, which is not good as she could hurt herself. Interestingly this has revealed that Roxane has quite a bad eyesight as she can walk around 30 cm from Röskva in my lap, on the same level as the floor, looking straight at us without reacting at all and preferring to put the nose to the floor as the major way of searching. The others do use their eyes in the same situations.

Advantages of getting her here early

A few good things with Röskva coming to us early have been that she was easy to teach to eat anything given her (Roxane still hardly eats anything but cat food, sausage, raisins and cheese); As she has started going out for walks early she's not frightened of it at all, even in the daytime (this thanks to mum who takes her out about one hour in the morning and one in the afternoon).

What's in a name?

I've been asked "what kind of name is Röskva, really?". Well, it's not like the others a completely normal (but perhaps less common) name, but rather a mythological one: The Norse god Tor had two human children as servants, Tjalve and his sister Röskva, which came about as a result of Loke tricking Tjalve into breaking one of Tor's goats' bones when they were having dinner at Röskva and Tjalve's family at Midgård.

Röskva means "human" and I don't think that's a name given to girls even in Iceland.

Röskva fights dirty

This Tuesday Röskva was over again for a visit and happened to get into a scrap with Roxane as usual. Normally, noone is very fond of going into a transport cage with a loudly screaming ferret, but Roxane did. There didn't seem to be much actual biting, but a whole lot of wrestling and Roxane pushing her back towards Röskva. Röskva was thrown out three times and three times jumped back into the cages with all four paws extended, so she's probably noticed she isn't very much smaller any more.

When Roxane came out, she was bleeding a lot from one paw (and she had one scratch ove one eye since an earlier encounter). I'd noticed earlier that Röskva wasn't inhibited from snatching at paws, but this time one claw was completely broken off.

A quick trip to the vet showed that it was broken off outside of the finger "just like when you've cut off too much" (which I've never done) and likely not a problem except for infection risk and pain. Can we guess this'll mean Roxane'll take longer to accept Röskva, if ever?

Meeting other ferrets

This Sunday we'd a meeting in Stockholm to which I brought Röskva only.

Happily it proved that she has understood that it's only the gang of four that's really dangerous and learned to tell one ferret from another. To begin with, she of course didn't want to get too close to any of the others, but she didn't do as when coming face to face with mine: Scream with a fluttering tongue. Not that I'd have let her get in harm's way, as the principle for the last few days has been to get her used to be close to ferrets, without actually getting into a fight with them. All this in order to get her to keep quiet, as it's the screaming which turns at least Rustan into a violent ferret.

(Rustan has even started to chase poor Alison when there's a general fight in progress, so it's something about all this that's disturbing him.)

After returning home, Röskva even dared to sniff closely on a sleeping Carmen, so I've got hopes she'll get used to them and the other way round.