[A] They ought not to be handled before they are one month old.
IX.—STRENGTH AND BITE.
The great strength of the ferret is in the teeth, neck, and forefeet. One ferret can hold up eight times its own weight with its teeth. Twenty or thirty ferrets when hungry will fasten their teeth in a piece of meat and can be picked up in this way and swung around without ever causing them to think of letting go. They will hang to an object which they have been provoked against with a persistence which would make a Bill Sykes bull-dog blush with shame. The only way to loosen their hold is to grasp them firmly around the neck with the pressure on the skull, and to shove them towards the object, not from it, for if you try the latter way you can pull for a day and a night without any perceptible result on the ferret.
The bite of a ferret is not dangerous; they will only bite a human being out of mistake, because they don't see well in the daytime. They imagine you are kindly holding down some bit of meat for them to chew at, and they don't bite because they are at all viciously inclined towards you. Of course you don't want to tease, annoy, or step on them, or you may find them loaded. If a ferret bites you, he will let go immediately, and you and the ferret both will quickly realize the mistake.
X.—HANDLING.
Ferrets should at first be handled by the back of the neck. The tail is the natural handle for lifting up a ferret, in the same degree that the ears are of a rabbit. The ferret should only be lifted by the tail and should be handled by the back of the neck. After a wild ferret has been handled this way for some time he will get to be very tame and you can handle him in any way. He will get so that he will hop up in his pen at your approach and want you to play with and caress him, although it is never advisable to give him your perfect confidence, such as putting him to your face, etc.
XI.—WITH CATS AND DOGS.
Ferrets are easily kept with cats and dogs, and after a little training and discipline they will hunt together, the ferret being generally used to drive out the rats from the holes in a barn, etc., and the dog doing the killing. When they are first introduced to each other there will be a little sparring, and the dog's master must strictly forbid his dog to touch the ferret or else the dog may kill it at the first wrestle, but after the novelty of each other's appearance has worn off they will lie down together in one corner and be the best of friends, as I have witnessed scores of times. The writer has cats and ferrets on his farm that regularly feed and play together. Ferrets should not be kept in a place with sick dogs or cats, as the disease will surely be transmitted to them.
XII.—THE FERRET'S ADVANTAGES AS A RAT EXTERMINATOR.
Ferrets have been brought forward, chiefly by the labors of the present writer, to be regarded within the last few years as domestic animals. There is certainly, yet, a great degree of prejudice against the ferret—a natural result of ignorance of its ways; but we firmly believe that the more it comes in contact with man, and is bred in captivity, the more readily it will be put by him in the division of common domestic animals, and he will, furthermore, find it his best remedy in rat extermination, making the latter worthies as scarce as the ordinary rat has made its black-complexioned cousin.