Dear Ferret Folks-
 
What follows is a re-post of my arguement for why one should minimally
vaccinate ferrets against rabies.  This is for Angie and Roscoe, welcome
to the FML!
 
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>Date:    Sun, 20 Jan 2002 10:46:16 -0500
>From:    sargentcolburn <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: I Hate Meeses to Pieces, Especially FLYING Ones!
>
>Oh, yes Dear Ferret Folks-
>
>Our Fuzzies can be deadly effective little hunters, as Kim's post
>illustrated.  Several years age, while I was napping, I was awakened
>abruptly by the most horrid noises you can possibly imagine.  Piercing
>shrieks, scrabbling and scratching sounds, thumps, the sound of things
>being overturned.  My Ferret Mommy Radar instinctively knew that weasels
>were involved.  I ran through the house to the sound of a battle being
>waged.."Oh god, oh, god let them be O.K.!)
>
>I found Sabrina engaged in mortal combat with...something.  She was
>rolling on the floor with something small, dark, fuzzy, and wounded in
>her mouth.  "A mouse!", I thought.  A mouse that was shrieking, bleeding
>and ...flapping?  Flapping as in wings?  That weren't no oooordinary
>mousie, oh no, it was much worse than that.  It had a little gargoyle
>face, tiny fangs, and membranous wings.  It was a BAT.  A small brown
>BAT. One I was going to have to remove from Sabrina's face with my BARE
>HANDS.
>
>Rabies.  The Black Death of Europe.  Thoughts of contagion and vile,
>black, dripping disease flashed through my mind.  Bat cooties.  What if
>it bit me?  What if Sabrina wouldn't let go and I had to wrench it from
>her bloody fangs by force?  In the end that's just what happened.
>Sabrina was NOT about to part with her prize willingly.  Nope.  She
>evidently had plans to mount it's dark Satanic little head on a plaque
>and keep the trophy on her cage wall.  Imagine tearing sounds.
>
>I telt terrible for the bat, at the same time I was afraid of it.  By
>then it was pretty clear that its' carefree days of wolfing down its'
>own weight in mosquitos were over.  It was no more.  It had ceased to
>be.  This was an ex-bat.
 
>Sabrina was sooooo pissed at me.
>
>Especially during the several weeks she was quarintined in her cage
>after the animal control officer came.  Evidently the bat was not rabid,
>although I destroyed the possibility of testing it by placing it's
>tattered little body in a Zip-Loc and freezing it in anticipation of
>his arrival, hence the quarrintine.  Freezing destroys the virus.
>Fortunately, some months before, some paranoid impulse lead me to have
>my vet vaccinate all of my mammalian pets.  I still had the metal tag
>and papers.  Thus Sabrina did not suffer the fate of the late, lamented
>KodoNobody cut her head off, then decided she was fine.
>
>Remember this, the next time you might be tempted to say "But my
>petnever leave the house, I don't need to vaccinate them..."
>
>I later tried to sicc Sabrina (henceforth known as Sabrina the
>Bat-Biter) on the mice in my Mother's pantry to no avail.  Sabrina only
>hunts on her own terms, evidently.  She has always been difficult.  She
>likes her mice with wings.
>
>Sincerely,
>Alexandra in Massachusetts
>
>Switch the Kit: "What did it taste like, Aunt Sabrina?"
>Sabrina: "Chicken."
>[Posted in FML issue 3669]
[Posted in FML issue 3856]