Sorry about any mess; my asthma is worsening this afternoon and I really
am trying to catch my errors and hard to understand wording from that,
but...
 
When I was updating the states, protectorates, etc. on the improvements
to the Compendium if Animal Rabies Prevention and Control
<http://www.avma.org/pubhlth/rabcont.asp> in 1998 I was told that they
were illegal so they didn't care at that point about the change, and I
haven't heard since of them being legalized.  (BTW, NOT all states knew
of the changes even months after they were made; in Utah I actually
found 2 departments which needed that info bu tdidn't know it.)  Could
you check with other departments in HI, Dawn,in case the person you spoke
with was wrong, or in case you get a verification of the change?  I hope
it will be the latter.  if it is that will be great ammo for the CA
people!  (If you can get the actual wording in the documents and the
document titles/numbers that would be incredibly helpful, I am sure!)
I wonder if maybe they never had a hard ban but just enforced it as
such due tothe quarantine.  Whatever.  It will be interestingto know.
 
You wrote;
>In 1996, we had ferrets flying in from Australia but since we could
>have them land and change planes in California, they had to go through
>Hawaii.  We contacted the governor with the impression that they were
>illegal and were astonished to find that they are NOT illegal.  The
>governor explained that ferrets are required to have a 1 year
>quarantine... not illegal in Hawaii but the quarantine makes it almost
>impossible to bring them in.  To my knowledge, the only state still
>listing them as illegal is California.  But I thought this tidbit of
>information could come in handy especiallly since California is the
>only state who has not opened up.  Hawaii is open to them but you have
>to go through quarantine for 1 year.
 
I am sorry to read about your cat, Nancy.  Thankfully, ferrets don't
get feline distemper.  The vaccinations are never perfect; usually they
provide something like 94% to 98% protection in testing, which is whole
lot better than none.  Sadly, you may have beaten the odds in a bad
way.
 
Thanks, Stephenie!  You make excellent sense!
 
Phyllis wrote:
>I took Generosity to the vet today.  He has both insulinoma and Adrenal
>cancer.  The vet was telling me that they had been participating in a
>scientific study on prevention and the use of .Lupron.  Their findings
>is that if an annual dose of Lupron if started early enough will prevent
>adrenal cancer and it will help other ferrets not getting it as early.
 
Yes, the preventative shot is inthe Spring and may need to be repeated
if in the later months of the year the ferret starts having too much
exposure to artificial lighting (Ferrrets need 14 hours of darkness in
each 24 hour period).  BTW, I hope that it is not cancer.  Most adrenal
growths are NOT.  Luckily, even if it is a malignancy: if it is an
adenoma with early correction it likley won't metastasize.  There's a
great past post I carried over written by Dr. Bruce Williams on this
in the FML Archives.  There is also prevention work using darkness or
melatonin, and also on using both darkenss or melatonin and Lupron going
on.  progress!
[Posted in FML issue 4625]