Q: "Yo Bob! You hardly post anymore...what are you up to ferret-wise?
You still have ferrets? New Zealand still on? Any new research? Are
you recovered from Portland?"

A: You missed a post just a few days ago. Oops, your email predated the
post. My bad.

I have been extremely busy lately. I am getting ready for a New
Zealand/Europe research trip, starting in March and lasting 2 to 3
months. It is taking up a lot of time, but the research is more than
worth the trouble. I have about 20 major goals for the trip, including:

1. Speaking at the Australian Ferret Symposium
2. Generating empirical data on ferret and polecat diet
3. Generating empirical data on ferret and polecat dental problems
4. Generating empirical data on ferret skeletal changes because of
   diet, domestication and husbandry
5. Identifying behavioral changes in New Zealand feral ferrets
   (compared to polecats and pet ferrets)
6. Generating empirical data on New Zealand feral ferret genetics (I
   can now prove a founder's effect)
7. Obtaining ferret tissue samples (for insulinoma, adrenal, and other
   researchers)
8. Finishing once and for all my skeletal and dental research so I can
   get it off my plate and publish a final report
9. Generating empirical data on pet ferret age at death (based on
   dental cementum analysis)
10. Generating empirical date proving pet ferrets will not go feral in
    California
11. Trying to explain to some under-educated vets what "Sampling to
    Redundancy" means and why my skeletal and dental samples are random,
    redundant, and more than applicable to the questions asked (can you
    tell I am fed up with non-scientific suppositional claims? Woe to
    the next brainiac who makes a suppositional claim unsupported with
    empirical data...).

There is a lot more I will be doing, including needed museum work
in Budapest, Paris, Angers, Scotland, London, Rome, and Poland. My
schedule allows little time for sight-seeing, so while some might
consider this a vacation, remember I will be working up to 16 hours a
day, 7 days a week. I will be in New Zealand for a month to 5 weeks,
Australia about a week to 10 days, and the rest of the time in Europe.
*IF* I can spare the funds and time, I will try to do some work in
Russia and Ukraine. If not, well, I can live without it, because most
of my samples will be/have been sampled to redundancy and proved to be
random.

I will share many of my findings with the FML, but the juicy parts will
be reserved for ferret symposiums. For example, I am now sectioning
ferret long bones, generating empirical data that shows exactly how
neutering impacts male and female skeletons. I am also generating data
that can be used to disprove CaCaLand Fishin' Gestapo claims that pet
ferrets can go feral simply because there are New Zealand feral
ferrets. I'll have a few surprising big names as coauthors for that
one. Again, you will have to go to a symposium to see this in detail,
or wait for it to get in print.

Because of the timing of the research, I will not be traveling to
California next spring for talks (2008). It is a hard commute from
New Zealand. Nonetheless, I'll be open for talk requests for all of
2008 EXCEPT March, April, May, and June.

In December 2007, I'll be in York PA to give a talk. I just hope I
don't have to drive all night through an ice storm to get there this
time. There is some interest for me to speak in New York and Kentucky,
but no dates have been set.

As for current research, I have just finalized my dental study on North
American pet ferrets. All empirical data has been sampled to redundancy
(no suppositions of "genetics" or "diet" or "anything else" can be used
to argue that dental wear is not caused by kibble consumption (major
element) or cage chewing (minor element). I hope to get the x-ray
microanalyses (elemental studies) of pet ferret bone and teeth that
show empirical differences between raw food diets and kibble diets done
before I leave for New Zealand. I will also be taking SEM micrographs
of the wear on ferret teeth that will eliminate any question as to
causation. Obviously, I will have to do more of this work after I
return. I have also started using kibble samples (with multiple
controls) to grind manufactured hydroxyapatite samples to nail the
lid down on tooth wear grinding rates. An international expert on vet
dentistry will be a coauthor on my final paper on this subject and has
told me my research design is among the best they have seen. I have
already published two papers on this subject, and I want to have my
final paper on dental problems done by the end of 2008.

My study to show the link between diet and insulinoma is going
extremely well. I have vets across the USA and Europe preserving
randomly obtained samples of pet ferret pancreases (with diet
information and a few bones that can be subjected to elemental x-ray
microanalyses to prove dietary history, as well for my bone density
studies. Yes, diet history can be shown in bone element analysis). I'll
collect similar samples from polecats and New Zealand feral ferrets. I
am not sure I can sample this to redundancy, but I'll still be able to
prove their random character. This study, which I hope to finish by
2009, should correlate ferret diet to pancreatic histology. Hopefully,
this will show beyond a reasonable doubt that insulinoma is positively
linked to diet. My research design has passed the review of three
world-class pathologists, so I think the results will be fair to
publish.

Some of you might recall a few years back I did a rather quick study of
the effect of colloidal silver on bacterial growth, using several types
of agar plates streaked with ferret fecal samples (that study showed CS
had ZERO effect on retarding normal bacterial growth at any dilution,
including straight from the bottle). I have recently starting doing
bacterial counts of streak plates made from fresh raw chicken, Bob's
Chicken Gravy, cooked chicken, various kibble, and commercially
available ferret treats and chews. This should be done before I leave
for New Zealand. I'll probably release this data during a ferret
symposium. I have already noticed a surprising trend that might shock
many of you.

I have some other projects on the back burners, and I'll be collecting
samples and data on my trip that can be used by other researchers at
their request.

As for ferrets, I currently have 13, having recently lost Pilsner, who
died from a brain tumor. Bruiser, who cannot care for himself or even
ambulate because of CNS problems, is doing well. He eats nothing but
Bob's Chicken Gravy diluted 4:1 with an electrolyte solution (I dilute
it because he gets way too fat otherwise). My vet can hardly believe
how healthy he his, even with his medical problems. Sampson, who I
discussed a few days ago, is doing great. He will now come up to me
without cowering. He is on a completely raw diet of chicken and frozen
mice. Belle is doing wonderfully and is also eating nothing but Bob's
Chicken Gravy and raw chicken. Clyde is climbing stairs like a pro,
completely recovered from his broken pelvis and femurs (kudos to
Rocky's for their great work before I adopted him). Peter, ill with
cardiomyopathy, nearly died a few weeks ago while I was on the road,
but my son Andrew gently nursed him back to health. Popeye is still a
big oaf, but I fear he is showing the first signs of adrenal disease.
Lil' Girl is also showing signs of adrenal disease and will go under
the knife shortly. Scout is a grumpy old granny and now has cataracts,
which makes her even grumpier. Kinnley, my gray ghost, is healthy
and fat, as is Daisy and Caesar. All three are MF adoptees, but the
sweetest little floor monkeys you can ever meet. Rummy and Kahlua are
still sexually intact, so run the roost for the most part. Both are
currently fat little monsters. Akira, my genet, is providing me with
plenty of behavioral data and bone-filled poop for the SEM. He eats
nothing but raw chicken and frozen mice. I've been studying Akira to
refute the claims of a researcher who thinks some Greek references to
an animal used to hunt rabbits was a genet, not a ferret.

I completely recovered from Portland months ago (think July). I still
feel horrible about getting food poisoning and not being my typical
cheerful and argumentative self. Still, it had its positive side. I
realized how many people cared about me and respected me, something
that a person with my background tends to overlook from time to time.
Dozens of people spent precious time taking care of me. The symposium
ladies were extremely understanding, as were the speakers to allowed
their times to be shifted to better suit my ability to stray from the
toilet. I ate $20 worth of mints, which actually helped control the
nausea AND gave me sweet breath, and it proved you can live on a diet
of peppermint. I am still not sure what caused the food poisoning;
sources initially reported to me turned out to be false. I suspect it
came from a chili covered hot dog I wolfed down at a truck stop, but
honestly, I could have been infected almost anywhere. Oh, one really
cool thing was that when I went to the ER, they did a Cat scan from my
head to my butt and I got a copy of it. I've been looking at scans of
my innards, displayed on my desktop of my computer. It is sooo cool!

Ok, I think I have answered all questions. Sorry about the lack of
posting, but I am so swamped I have to make appointments to scratch my
butt. I force myself to answer email for an hour a day, but have to
dedicate most of that time to professional and research work, leaving
precious little time to write to friends or answer questions. This
should change after I return from this research trip and things start
slowing down.

Bob C [log in to unmask]

[Posted in FML 5797]