John sent:
>I came upon one where a giggly, obviously demented, young girl decided
>to give her ferret a "taste" of her jalapena pepper!
>
>Then proceded to tape the poor little guy chugging water down out of
>her glass for an extended period of time!
>
>Made me cry...
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWl_snUToM8

In 26 years with ferrets we have had 3 or 4 who LOVED hot things. In
fact, our current Whizbang is like that. I don't mean milder things
like a mild cactus sauce but moderate to hot things. She usually
prefers the moderate ones, but Haleakala in the past was wild about
hotter ones. Most of our ferrets have no interest.

My suspicion is that the degree of discomfort varies among ferrets just
as it does among people. The ferret did not make pain sounds, did not
fluff-up, did not gag or cough, and was willing to sniff bu tnot sample
the pepper slice again. My suspicion is that the degree of discomfort
was low and I noticed that it occured after the ferret tried to bite
the side so the ferret may have take in a seed. Even a person like me
whose favorite peanut butter sandwich is one with a quarter to a half
of a sliced habanero can be irritated if a jalapeno seed gets lodged in
mouth tissues. Also, that looked like a pickled nacho slice so there
could have been vinegar responsible for part of the response. (BTW,
yes, I went to having some thin plastic gloves around for slicing
habaneros after i learned the hard way that a half dozen washes are
not enough to remove the oil from fingers before using eye meds.)

On the other hand, i've got a friend here on the FML who can't cope
with any spicing who thought that I must be nuts to enjoy it so greatly
until she learned how varied the response can be, and Steve's parents
think that a few dashes of Tabasco in an entire dish makes it painfully
spicy.

Individuals of more than one species seem to vary a LOT in regard to
how much they respond to hot peppers.

They should have contained themselves, though, and given the ferret
something with fat to remove the pepper oils: milk (esp. whole), cream,
ice cream, butter, an oil based treat, etc. Water doesn't cut it, but
will wash down a stuck seed if lucky.

And now I feel like snacking on some peppers...

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html

[Posted in FML 5605]