Jack’s Origin Story-2021

Danny and I have always wanted to add ferrets to our family. Danny had one as a pet when he was younger, and I had worked with and fell in love with several at the Children’s Zoo in Zoo Miami. We love how smart and mischievous they can be and know that they require a lot of attention, including regular time outside of their cage. As much as we wanted to start on our dreams of housing a ferret army, we knew that the responsible thing would be to wait until we could safely provide them with everything, they would need to live their best lives.

One of the huge things stopping us from immediately bringing home all the ferrets was that they would need a safe space away from our dogs when they were both in and out of their cage. Our husky, Emma, has proven to have a strong prey drive and a taste for small animals so any small creature that we brought home HAD to be kept safe from her. This meant we needed to be able to always keep Emma separated from them unless she was closely supervised.

Ferrets are also considered to be exotic pets and the costs of veterinary care reflect that. Danny and I needed to be sure that we would be able to deal with the additional financial costs of taking care of additional animals including the higher vet fees associated with owning an exotic pet.

We bought our house in the fall of 2019 and our home now allows us the flexibility to easily separate animals from each other if need be. We now had a basement, a doorway between the kitchen and dining room (we put in a baby gate), and a couple of bedrooms. This meant that we now had the space to bring home a ferret but needed to make sure we could financially take another animal on.

Unfortunately, in 2020, Emma tore her ACL and developed an autoimmune disorder. Helping her heal required a lot of time and A LOT of money. However, we were finally in a good financial position halfway through 2021 and we started talking again about adding a ferret to the family.

Danny and I admittedly both have a bad habit of looking at different sites for animals that need to be rescued or rehomed. As we found ferret posting on our different apps we would mention them to each other but still hadn’t found one available at the same time that both of us felt comfortable bringing one home.

In July of 2021, I came across a plea on behalf of another family looking to rehome their ferret, Jack. Jack’s playmate had passed away and one of the children in the home had become sick. Their doctors thought the sickness was due to ferret allergies. This meant that Jack wasn’t getting time outside of his cage and the owners felt that the best thing for him would be to find him another home.

I shared Jack’s story with my husband and we both decided to reach out for more information. We were given the contact information of Jack’s family and confirmed his rehoming fee after asking several health questions. Jack was estimated to be about 3-4 years old and in decent health. After a few days, Danny and I decided that the time was right, and we picked Jack up on July 25 and brought him home.

Jack is a wonderful addition to our family. He is fearless (almost too fearless) in all his interactions with both of us and our pups. He has no issue ‘yeeting’ himself off things no matter how high or precarious the surfaces involved may be. He annoys and slightly scares Charlie, has enamored Kiara and tempts Remington and Emma.

When he gets excited, he earns his nickname “Gator” because he does a death roll with whatever he is playing with. He loves the sound of scratching bubble wrap and packing paper and running through tunnels. Unfortunately, he has also fallen in love with scratching up the bottom of my sneakers and if you tell him ‘no’ he simply hears ‘find another way’.

His current goal in life is to find a way to make it to the top of my computer desk to hack the government’s security system via my laptop. He had also quickly learned how to let himself out of his cage if the lock mechanism isn’t fully enabled. Jack can be very smart when he wants to be! We have introduced him to food puzzles which he enjoys and even got a backpack so he can join us on our walks around the neighborhood.

During the warmer months, Danny and I take Jack downstairs for his free-roaming time where he gets access to most of the basement. This is where we realized that in a large space, he doesn’t believe in being restricted to where he uses the bathroom. Unlike most ferrets, he will use a different spot every time he needs to go. In the winter months, he joins me in our upstairs office.

It is so amazing seeing Jack’s personality and his different quirks come out the longer he lives with us, and we are so happy he has joined our household. We know that ferrets do better with at least one other ferret buddy, so we are on the lookout for his future sibling. In the meantime, Jack really keeps us on our toes!

If you want to hear more about how our other pets joined our family and more about their funny personalities, check out the origin stories of Remington, Kiara, Charlie, and Emma.

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