The vast majority of the people thanking me for my posts on bullying
mentioned that they have had ferrets in their families for fifteen
years or more. Many of those spoke of long known -- not guessed --
lifespans and good health.

Yet, despite that even they have had a few relative novices who have
not even had ferrets for as long as a typical ferret life span in the
families of the experienced people try to bully those experienced
people into doing things in only the novices' ways, and have had the
bullies try to instill misplaced guilt in them.

The people who have had ferrets a long time have experienced a lot and
have watched others do so. They -- and this includes Steve and I since
we have had ferrets in our family for more than thirty years -- have
seen a great many things work out well and also have noticed that every
one of those things has multiple working variations but also has its
own ways of going wrong. There is no one solution. Nothing is perfect,
and some of the things that relative novices demonize actually can and
often have worked very well for many ferrets, while some of the things
pushed by them as marvelous actually have their own risk factors just
like most things in life do.

Anyway, I was impressed. I had not realized so many FML members have
had ferrets in their families for over twenty years which was the
timeframe mentioned most often in the thank you notes from kibble
feeders. Thinking about it, though, I guess many on the FML have been
here for quite some time and many of us have grown a LOT together over
the decades.

NEW TOPIC FOR THE LIST: A number of those who sent me thank you notes
mentioned some kibble-fed ferrets among their family members who had
lifespans that were over ten years. Such reports seemed more common to
me back before there were so many fancy ferrets though they are still
around, of course. I am curious if my impression on this is accurate
and if so then to what degree.

Could people who have had ferrets who lived to KNOWN ages of ten years
or more -- not estimated but known with paperwork -- tell the FML when
those were and a bit about them, please?

Our oldest did not quite reach that age and was over twenty years ago.
She was a standard, kibble fed, exercised a lot, got many hours of
access to darkness, too, and in general had mostly good health till
she developed an autoimmune problem.

Please, do NOT include ferrets of estimated ages. Over the years I have
seen so very many have to retract estimated ages once more was known.
So, I guess the shortest time a responder to this question will have
had ferrets is ten years if the original ferret just passed at ten
years of age...

[Posted in FML 7813]