Q: My ferret, Mira, is stuck in the wall. She stripped the duct tape which had fixed the cardboard on the wall / crawl space hole. She was there before and I was able to hear her, but now I can not hear her at all. I tried to squeak her toy, but there was nothing. Before, I heard her in the downstairs bathroom hissing and scratching trying to get out. What do I do in this situation, please help me?
Answer: My ferret once got stuck in the wall, too. She did the same as yours. I was worried she was badly hurt and trying to escape, but she just got tired and couldn’t make a sound for about two hours. Yours is probably doing the same thing as mine: resting. She just exhausted all her energy.
Here’s how to get a stuck ferret out of the wall:
- First of all, please call animal control or search online for a ferret rescue group. You can do either phone or e – mail. They may have suggestions for enticing the ferret out.
- Next, in order to lure him out, drop a small piece of his favorite food in the hole and make sure it is nice and smelly. You must put that food outside the hole and wait for him to come out of the hole. In other words, it leads him with his nose.
- To make sure that he can smell the treats from inside the wall and that he is therefore enticed out of the hole by the treats, line up the treats outside of the hole and then set up a fan to blow the scent into the hole.
- Then get a live capture trap and leave home one day after putting out the best ferret food you can. Please close the house completely.
- Next squeak her favorite toy a few times by the hole and back away by 3 feet. Continue to sqeak the toy at a short distance, so the ferret has to come and find the source of the noise. Don’t overly sqeak because your ferret may loose interest. Just keep calling and squeeking her toys every so often and make sure there is no loud music or anything so you can keep an ear out.
- If you have one, a feather cat teaser may be what you need just to stick to a hole and entice him out (or a feather duster in a pinch).
- Then see if you can get her out by unscrewing vent covers and such before cutting into a wall.
- If this fails, just use a hammer and start hitting the wall where you last heard her. Trust me, whoever you report to later will be less angry about a few holes in the wall than they would about a dead ferret in the wall starved to death.
- If you can, try and lure her somewhere so that you know exactly where she is and then make a hole close to where she is and get her out. DON’T PULL HER BY THE TAIL. You can break their ribs that way.
- Or Call a contractor to cut a hole into the wall. It needs to be done in less than a day of loosing your ferret, they can starve to death in 2-3 days.
- Next fashion a rope ladder with mesh and coarse cloth strips; something that he can climb – attract him like that with food near the top. When he entered the hole he might have fallen into the wall too far back and gotten stuck. So lower something in the hole and help him climb back out.
- If you can see that the hole is too high, another possibility is to completely cut off a narrow strip of wall boards from the hole to the baseboard so that he can climb out.
- Finally, if he does come out, don’t run at him and scare him back in the hole, but do have a plan ready, such as have somebody standing nearby to immediately block the hole once he comes out. Just as fast as you got him out, he can dive back in, so try to get you between him and the hole before making a move for him.
Remember: when ferrets sleep, some ferrets tend to doze off very heavily. if he has crawled into your walls, he may not respond until he has awaken.
Ferrets Stuck in the Wall/Crawlspace
Ferrets CAN NOT always get out of what they get into. If you don’t get this ferret out of that wall, he will die. Mine got under the neighbors deck once and wouldn’t come out.
I tricked him out with his favorite treat: Peanut butter(which he never gets because it’s REALLY bad for him, but it was an emergency with the neighbors dog and all…) My female got in the vents, we had to pull that apart and coax her out with water.
Whatever the method, once he is out of the walls, go around every inch of the house and find a way to secure and cover holes in cielings, cracks in floors and floorboards, vents, dryer hoses, loose screens, walls, light fixtures, and any place into which your ferret might be able to climb into and get stuck.