Dear Ferret Folks-

I had almost forgotten about this one, but the recent discussion about
stuck toes brought it all back.

(Sigh.) Ping just gets into things. Puma has, well, more brains. But my
husband was going around the house, weather proofing, looking to stop
up little drafts. He was crawling around under countertops and in
closets looking for drafts, which he stopped with one of those aerosol
cans of Expand-O-Foam. It's sort of like shaving cream that dries to
hard plastic.

Ping must have followed my husband, quietly.

Fast forward to the next day. I notice that Ping appears to have a big
piece of popcorn stuck to one of his front paws. Hmmm....Popcorn stuck
to the other front paw, too....only it's not popcorn. It's dried
Expand-O-Foam. And ALL of Ping's front toes are glued together with
it. He's wearing little Expand-O-Foam booties. He must have dug in
the stuff before it fully hardened.

Grand. Just Grand, Ping.

Well, I held Ping and Dann poured a shot of Ferretone into Ping's belly
fur. A big one. Dann took a pair of little nail scissors and carefully
clipped his toes apart, one from the other.(VERY nerve wracking to
do!!!) Ping now looked even more ridiculous than before.Now he looked
like he was wearing a giant pair of gloves that did not fit. Dann
clipped off a lot of paw fur. He trimmed off a certain amount of claw.
While Ping was still slurping, I was able to take my long thumbnail and
trim the rest of the residual Expand-O-Foam from the claw surfaces. It
does come off, but it needs to be scraped with a stiff fingernail.
Maybe an ATM card would work.

When I released him, Ping just lay down on the bed on his belly and
looked shaken. This had clearly been an ordeal for him,(ten minutes, a
long time in ferret time) and I had a sense that he was glad to have
his feet back. He is often in the habit of putting himself back in his
cage when he has had enough rompin' and stompin' time, and I think he
just gave up and went home when he realized he was in trouble with the
foam, instead of looking for a hoomin to help him. (Bonehead.) He had
spent the night in foam booties.

We got about ninety eight percent of the stuff off of Ping's toes, and
I did not find chunks of it in any of the places Ping likes to poop.
Apparently it does not taste too good. This happened about two weeks
ago, and Ping is clearly fine. Anyway, be warned. We were boneheads,
too. The stuff could make for a life threatening blockage under the
right conditions, say, he had tried to chew his toes clear. (There were
no bite marks on it, must have tasted *very* bad.) We were just lucky,
and so was Ping.

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 5469]