This was the evil carrot

1. While we were in Idaho for the holidays, we went to a Thai restaurant with family. One of the things we ordered was a soup with spiciness rating of 4 (out of 4). I like spicy food so I had Angela scoop me some of it. She asked me if there was anything specific in the soup that I wanted. I saw a baby carrot so I thought “ooh, I really feel like having a carrot.” I ate most of the soup and then got to the carrot. I bit down on it and thought it had a weird texture–kind of hollow with a chewy skin. It had such a weird texture that I spit it out to find that it wasn’t a carrot but a Thai pepper! My mouth was already burning but kept getting increasingly painful. The burning just wouldn’t go away even after drinking 4 glasses of water and eating two plates of rice. I started hyperventilating and I couldn’t see anything around me. I thought I was going to pass out! Or die!
2. 

   On the left is the mysterious cut I had when I woke up. On the right is the bite from ferret at Petco.

   All night last night, my finger was hurting. This morning I woke up to find that I had a cut about 1/4 inch wide on my finger and it was bleeding. What!? Where did that come from? Angela?
3. Today we went to Petco and saw they had a ferret. This one was particularly interested in us. I always stick my finger in the cage because the ferrets like to sniff you. This time was different. The ferret bit down on my finger hard and wouldn’t release it. I tried to shake her off to no avail. So then I tried to pull my finger out of the cage, and she still didn’t let go (even though her face was smashed against the cage). So I took my other finger and started tapping on her nose, which worked. Fifteen seconds and a bloody finger later, I finally had my finger back. Oh yea, and this bite was on the same finger that had the mysterious cut.

She hides flip flops so often that we put them on top of our table so she couldn’t get them. That didn’t work because all she had to do was climb the table. Now we keep flip flops on top of her cage because she hasn’t figured out how to climb it yet.

So I set out to build a barrier out of wood.  I’m pretty proud of what we ended up with, mostly because of how cheap it was.  The worker at Home Depot was extremely helpful.  We got some really MDF for really cheap since it wasn’t a full length.  The whole project cost $2.59.  Here are the pictures:

Pixel!

Introducing the newest member of the Chin family!  Pixel, our new pet ferret!  We got her last Monday, but we first met her three weeks ago.  We were walking around Petco looking at the animals until we saw the ferrets.  There were five ferrets in the cage, but there was a white one that was really interested in us looking at and smelling us.  She must have put some ferret spell on us because we kept wanting to buy her.  We checked out about ten books from the library about ferrets and kept checking Petco to make sure she wasn’t sold yet.  We were fearing the day that we’d go back and she’d be gone, especially because the ferrets had been marked 50% off.  We were sure she would be the first one to be bought because she was the cutest!  The day finally came when we took her home.  We named her Pixel because she was comparatively small (and because we’re nerdy).

Pixel likes to rip at her cage

Pixel sure is a handful!  She has so much energy and runs around wild (we’ll post a video later).  She bites when she’s having fun, but we’re trying to train her to not bite at all.  When we put her in her cage, she bites onto the wire and pulls violently.  And when she’s mad at us, she poops outside of her litter box.

We think she’s deaf because she doesn’t wake up or respond to any amount of noise.  Which could explain a lot of her behavior.  We learned that deaf ferrets often tip their head back like a Pez dispenser.  Intense staring is another thing that deaf ferrets usually do, and that’s probably what entranced us about her in the first place.

So far, we’ve had some interesting ferret adventures.  Pixel sleeps for about 18 hours each day, but when she’s up for those remaining 6 hours it’s like her energy has been concentrated, distilled then distilled again.  She’s like a little ball of craziness!  We’ve showered her with all sorts of toys, but her favorite toys are still this paddle ball Angela got for free at a conference, a cardboard tube from our Rockband set’s box and a big plastic bag.  I guess she’s into cheap things like her human parents.  Her craziest moment yet was yesterday right after we gave her a bath.  She was bouncing off the walls, literally.  She ran all over the apartment, ran into every piece of furniture and was just rolling around.  According to the books we’ve read that’s pretty normal for bath time…so we can look forward to it every other week…yay. 

She sure is a lot of work, but we’re sure glad to have her as an addition to the family.