It was the summer of 1998 and the ad in the paper read ferret with
cage-free.  So having been talked enough to by my husband and daughter,
and months of reading the FML and everything I could think of, I took the
plunge and called.  Well, the free one was gone, but she just happened to
have one for $50, with cage she'd sell me.  Told my husband, he said go for
it, and got lost three times but finally found the house.  The woman had
him outside in her garage-she had fleas in the house and was bombing it.  I
looked into the eyes of a silver mitt male, not a young one, he was between
3 to 3 1/2 years old.  I handed her the fifty and had to have help getting
him and the cage into the car- I'd just had major back surgery the month
before and was in a clamshell brace (the plastic maiden I so lovingly
called it).
 
The first thing I had to do upon bringing him home was bathe him in flea
shampoo, twice.  Being a new ferret slave I didn't know he'd gone into a
depression, he seemed happy, chased the cats, had a good time.  Wasn't
real lovey, but I figured that was his nature.  Sara was in Montana for
the month of July, visiting her grandparents, uncle, aunt, cousins, and
relatives.  She phoned that night, I told her that Socks, as he was called,
had come to live with us.  I called the vet they supposedly used; they
hadn't seen him in two years, so no updated vaccinations.
 
Sara came home from Montana, we went to the pet/feed store and there was
a tiny, tiny sable kit all by herself.  We looked at each other and she
came home with us, so tiny that when I walked to Larry and said we did
something, hold out your hand, he could hold her in one hand and close
his fingers around her.  He named her Kit-and me being the way I was, I
introduced her to Socks that day.  Two days later he had a raging case of
ECE.  I took him to the vet, he gave him antibiotics.  I force-fed and
watered him, but he kept going down hill.  He saw the vet two more times,
and then on a Sunday I got up, his eyes weren't shiny, he was lethargic,
barely breathing.  I rushed downstairs, pulled up Ferret Central, got the
duck soup recipe.  Called Phyllis Smith, a friend who has ferrets in Indy,
got her recipe.  Called the vet, he told me it was worth a try.  Rushed to
the store, made the soup, got the Pedialyte.  And from then on every 45
minutes I was making him either take soup or Pedialyte water, plus Pepto
Bismal and Kaopectate.  By evening his eyes were bright and he even lapped
his soup and water by himself.  I couldn't take him to work, but made sure
he had plenty of everything before I left, fed him myself, then hit the
stairs at night to do it all over again.  Within a week he was back to me.
We went to the vet's office for his vaccinations a month later and the vet
told me he hadn't expected Socks to live.
 
Socks started it all; from himself to where we are now-14 ferrets.  He's
been my grand old man, never fought with any of them.  Just patient looks
at me like you've gone and done it again, haven't you-brought a new one in.
I don't think he'd ever seen a cat before he came with us, and he ruled the
roost with them.  It was fun to watch him chase them, then he'd stand with
this self-satisfied look on his face, you could see him smile.
 
Then the summer of 2000 his tail lost its hair, but then grew it back.
In October I had to take the Crew in for ear mite treatments and the
vets at Purdue discovered his heart was muffled.  So in he went for all
sorts of ultrasounds, x-rays, blood work.  He had some strange, massive
infection-three types of bacteria in his lungs; only 10% of his lungs
were working.  Mystified every vet in the clinic.  So two huge rounds of
Clavamox and his lungs came back, but the hair loss continued and it was
discovered he had adrenal-right adrenal, into the vena cava so bad the
ultrasound couldn't show blood flow.  Told by Purdue that he wasn't a
good surgical candidate, that Lupron was the way to go.  Two rounds of that
and I was wondering.  So I wrote to Dr. Williams, who wrote me personally,
encouraging me to aggressively treat this with surgery, no matter the
outcome.  Back to the clinic for the last ultrasound, got the name of Dr.
Cawood in Ft.  Wayne, Indiana.  Monday evening, the 22nd of Jan my family
took me to my niece's house in Ft.  Wayne-his surgery was to be the 23rd,
the following day.  The adrenal tumor was the biggest the vets had ever
seen, and we had to treat with cryosurgery.  They found a small insulinomic
tumor and removed that, and lo and behold he came through with flying
colors.
 
I got home from work 4/20/01 in the evening and Larry said Socks wasn't
feeling well.  I looked at him, knew he wasn't well, put him in the 'sick
cage' overnight.  Saturday morning he vomited-hard.  I had to hold him up,
and then I called the vet at Purdue.  We got in to see her and she thought
maybe he had helicobacter, so we started an aggressive treatment of
Pepto-Bismol and Amoxicillin, plus Sub-Q fluids.  I forced fluids on him
all day long till after 10:30 pm Saturday night.
 
I got up this morning (Sunday) to find him half out of his hammy, cold,
non-responsive, bladder and bowels released.  I held him, talked to him,
and Larry called our good friends Helga and Harvey Clarke.  Helga and I
spoke and cried for over an hour and a half.  After we got off the phone
Socks' bowels released two more times, and we took him to the emergency
clinic.  Once there he seizured-his glucose was down to 10.  They
immediately put fluids on him, glucose, you name it.  Brought him up to
270 on the glucose and he still seizured.  They called his regular vet and
she didn't understand why he was still seizuring.  So the emergency vet and
I talked, we discussed everything that had ever happened to Socks, and even
with all the glucose and everything else, he didn't think it was a good
prognosis.  And I, I was left with the decision.  My husband had left, just
came back and I told him, with the vet present, everything going down, and
that I couldn't see Socks suffer anymore.  Larry agreed, and so my Socks,
my first ferret, my Mr. Socko Tocko, went to the Rainbow Bridge.  All
morning I'd told him of it, and just before they assisted him, I told him
again, that he'd be healthy and whole, could play and dance.  To find
Nibbles and Bailey, and all the others, and show them what a gentleman
ferret was like.
 
So now the Crew of Merry Mayhem numbers 14 no longer, they're 13, and we
all mourn for our Grand Old Man, the Silver mitt gentleman, my Fifty Dollar
Ferret.  Go in peace Socks, for you are missed so much by us all.  My heart
is broken, I know it will heal eventually, but it hurts so much.  I'm
sorry, I'm crying and writing, and now rambling.  I've told the vet clinic
to perform a necropsy-we all want to know what went wrong.  Then they'll
return him to me and I'll have him cremated.  I need to find a pouch for
his ashes, and then he'll be with Nibbles and Bailey in the jar, and he
won't be sick anymore.
 
Sandy: Please make sure he finds Nibbles and Bailey, and if you have animal
crackers there, Socks loves them.  He couldn't have anything like that
after we discovered he was borderline insulinomic, but he loves them, and
ice cream.
 
Rebecca and the Crew of Merry Mayhem, who now mourn Socks
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy, and taste
 good with ketchup"
[Posted in FML issue 3396]