>From:    Juliana Quadrozzi <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Morehouse 17 Update
>
>...Hopefully they're all as friendly & healthy as they've assured me
>they are.  I think I'll ask my boss if I can take off the whole week, I
>think I'm going to need it.
 
Hi!  Just wanted to mention that I adoped a couple ferrets from the Univ.
of WA some years back.  They had been used to train students intubation
techniques.  Both were neutered and in apparent good health.  But my
husband was worried they'd be "psychologically damaged" after living in
a lab situation for a couple years (they are usually rotated out after a
certain amount of time).  I thought otherwise.
 
I felt like a true adopting mom - I was!!  - all the long day at work and
as I approached their room in the huge Health Sciences building.  There
door was opened and there were two BIG fuzzies in two barren cages, one
of them playing!  The lab tech said, "Oh, look, they're playing!  I've
never seen them do that!" I said something like, "Yes, that's what
ferrets do!".  She said to make absolutely sure they were introduced
slowly as they'd never been together.
 
The whole way home one of them batted a ball about, making a wonderful
racket :)P  As soon as I got home.... well, I couldn't resist.  Out they
both came together and in a split second they were crow hopping and
muck-mucking across the huge, wooden floor, having a ball, free as little
furred birds at last!!  Oh, did my heart ever swell and tears run over in
that wonderful, memorable moment.  How they played and played that day
and long beyond....
 
Percy and Shcroeder didn't live ultra-long lives with us, maybe a few
years.  But they were happy guys.  Schroeder Boat was the funniest
looking guy, but what a big buggy-eyed sweetheart!  He succumbed to
cardiomyopathy three or so years later, the first fuzzy we ever lost of
ten, and a real heartbreak.  Percy was my first adrenal boy and launched
the Ferret Adrenal-Insulinoma Mailing List (FAIML) that I ran for many
years.  He died while coming out of anesthesia following a long surgery
for a urinary blockage.... a real heartbreak as I later learned things
that could have saved him.... big, BIG, sigh.
 
But what a pair of sweeties they were!  And they finally got to live with
a whole brood of other fuzzies, got to learn to wrestle from Tarzan (once
he accepted Schroeder, which took ages - those two big alpha boys!), got
lots of romps outside, joined in teasing the big, old cat Wellington,
lived in our three-story wall- sized ferret condo... and generally made
us such a lucky mom, pop, and siblings!
 
Juliana, you're doing a wonderful thing!  I hope the Morehouse gang all
find homes where they're cherished as they should be.  I'll bet my bottom
dollary they'll all be the same rootin', hootin', paw-stompin' girls and
guys we all know and love, once their toes touch the floors of their new,
heartwarming homes.
 
Lynn, getting to visit my nephew fuzzy Beau-Bean tonight!!
[Posted in FML issue 4590]