[Are you *really* cshroot?  FML ack messages bounce - it's getting
annoying.  I don't want to special-case my software for you.]
 
I ran across something the other day that I thought I should post here.
 
There are two types of squeakers in squeaky toys.  The most common is the
whistle squeaker.  This is what we have used with our carpet sharks for a
long time.  Some of them will amuse themselves with a squeaky toy for hours
at a time.  The other type of squeaker is a reed squeaker, like a holloween
horn, only much smaller.  The squeaker itself is an almost flat bulb with a
tiny reed assembly attached somewhere along the edge.  When you squeeze the
bulb flat, it forces air across the plastic reed.  The sound that it makes
must be similar to a distress call of a baby ferret, as ALL of my females
went _*CRAZY!*_.  Arnie, the hob got mildly excited, but nothing near the
level of intensity of the jills.  My friend told me that when his wife
squeaked the toy, one of his jills RAN past the toy and bit his wife on the
calf.  This was not an otherwise agressive ferret, at all.  I cannot
emphasize enough, just how overwrought our jills became.  Just two squeaks
in succession and it took us another 30 seconds to calm them down.
 
My strong suggestion:  DON'T BUY REED STYLE SQUEAKY TOYS FOR FERRETS!!!!!
 
On the subject of allergies:
 
My wife is allergic to just about everything short of oxygen.  However, she
has not developed an allergy to ferrets.  Her immunologist (sp) told us that
it is probably because ferret dander is much closer to human dander than
most other animal dander.  This does not mean that someone may not be
allergic to ferret dander also.  It just means that it is less likely for
someone to be allergic to ferrets than most other animals.  He did tell us
that most people who are alergic to ferrets are people who have the worst
allergy problems to begin with.
 
Chris:
 
> *Except* I can't be sure that people
> haven't included a signature.  Which is problematical to detect.
> I will probably eventually automate it, but I'll have to issue
> warnings to people about what possible pitfalls there are.
 
Most (not all) Internet signatures are of the form "?????@???????", with no
space between the characters preceeding or following the at sign (@) or of
the form "?????!?????", with no space between the characters preceeding or
following the exclamation mark (!).  It would be easy to write an awk script
that would delete lines that contained that format within, say, 6 lines of
the end of the file.  The only problem, then, would be to warn those people
who put their real name on a different line than their email address or are
on a foreign net with different address structures.  But, you could probably
teach an awk script to recognize the most common of those, as well.
 
[Those aren't signatures, those are email addresses.  If everybody did
things right, it would be easy.  The signature separator is, by RFC,
"-- \n", but unfortunately, not everybody conforms to it - even you.
Thanks for the suggestion, but no, I don't think it's accurate
enough to be useful.  I'll do a little investigating.]
 
> [Is using a dud-stud preferable to a HCG shot?  At 6 months, it seems a
> little early to subject them to the tender mercies of a male in heat.]
 
All of our kits are bigger and stronger than their mother and their mother
got an HCG shot at 7 months and it lasted exactly 45 days.  Besides, I would
much rather do anything naturally, than to give an injection.  I also know of
a situation where two ferrets from the same litter received HCG shots at the
same time, both were at the same stage and weight, yet one was back in season
before the winter was over and the other did not come back into season until
a year after the following spring.  That is way too undependable for me.
Most times, a dud stud will take the jills out for the rest of the season and
they will come back in normally the next season.  Also, since two of these
jills are Gold Champions, after only one competition, I don't want to take
any un-necessary chances with hormones, as we will breed them next year.
 
-----------------
"Cats may be cool, but carpet sharks rule!"
 
John Gaver ([log in to unmask])
 
[Posted in FML issue 0506]