While we were doing the paperwork for the purchase, the owner of the store told us that several other people had bought the big guy and brought him back because of biting problems and that if we bought him, that he would not take the ferret back. The sale was final. We were a bit concerned about the biting problem, but we knew we could cure him of his bad habit. We got him home and Mischief and the new ferret immediately bonded. They would run around our one-room apartment bouncing, dooking and just having a blast! It took a couple of days to agree upon a name, but we finally decided that Trouble would be a good name for Mischief's partner in their little ferret "crimes."

Trouble had been part of our life for about a week when we discovered something new about him. We started up the vacuum cleaner to clean our small apartment and Mischief immediately ran and hid (she doesn't like the roaring beast with one big glowing eye!) Trouble, however, just kept running around the place like nothing had changed. We thought that maybe he didn't care about the noise, or maybe he couldn't hear it. After cleaning house, I snuck up behind Trouble while he was eating and smashed two pots together right behind his head. He didn't react at all even though Kim jumped out of her skin and my ears rang from the noise. We knew what the problem was with his biting now. He couldn't hear people approach him and when they touched him or picked him up, he would get startled and react by biting the thing that had "snuck" up on him.

Once we knew that he was deaf, that solved most of his biting problems. However, he did bite while playing, but he would bite too hard. We had to teach him what was acceptable biting and what wasn't. Kim taught Mischief about this by scolding her when she would bite to hard. We didn't have this option with Trouble because he was deaf. We tried taps on the nose, gentle thumps on the head and other methods, but nothing seemed to work. I finally resorted to using the method that I used on my little sister when she went through her biting phase... I bit back! If Trouble bit me too hard, I would just bite him back. It only took a couple of times of doing this to teach him what he needed to learn.

While doing some research online, we discovered that white-faced cats and ferrets are more predisposed to being deaf than other color schemes. Since Trouble was a white-faced ferret (actually all of him was white except for a spot on his spine and a ring on his tail) this explained his inability to hear. Even though he was deaf, we didn't love him any less and he was always a very good listener. You could sit with him on the floor and talk to him for hours and he'd never get bored.

We had trouble for a couple of years, but he passed away around Labor Day of 1999. He had become less energetic and was starting to lose hair. We checked him for an adrenal gland tumor, but there was nothing to be found. Apparently there was something wrong with him that we didn't know to look for. While he was with us, he was a delight... and loads of trouble.