Good news from the flea front.  NO MORE FLEAS!!!
 
We treated the entire upstairs and the stairs themselves with a product by
Zodiac that contained both Precor and Permethrin.  We found three fleas on
Jenny when we got home the next day, so we gave her a bath with Adams for
kittens and changed out her bedding one more time.  It has been two days and
we have not seen a single flea on any of our little carpet sharks.  And,
Jenny has gone to acting more like a normal ferret.  But, she is still at
least as sweet as Slinky (the Grand Dame of the house) and I never thought
that was possible.  When she plays, she plays hard, but when we hold her to
check her for fleas, it is as though she actually turns her body to help us
see better.  And she trusts us completely (she let us pick fleas from around
her eys, with a pair of tweezers, without a squirm).
 
Her new people are coming to take her to her new home in San Antonio tomorrow
evening.  I have met these people before and I am sure that she is going to a
good home.  But that doesn't mean that we will miss her any less.  They don't
realize, yet, just how good a ferret they will belong to.  Maybe we will get
her to have her people bring her back to Houston for the NAFA Ferret Show
next July.  If she does come back for that show, we will have to have a
special trophy made for her - maybe "Miss Congeniality".
 
Vicki says:
> John: Any shampoo applied to the ferret and allowed to sit for a period
> of at least 5 minutes should kill fleas, with one or two applications.
 
Vicki, these were TEXAS FLEAS.  They were big as they come and would not
listen to anyone who said that they couldn't do something.  Twice we let
shampoo set for about five minutes and then held her so that her body was
completely submerged for five minutes while we picked fleas off of her head
with tweezers.  Each time, when we held her under running water again, we saw
more fleas.  We finally resorted to picking the remaining fleas off of her
one at a time.  I know that it killed some of the fleas, because I saw them
going down the drain.  I think that it was just that some of those TEXAS
FLEAS refused to die.  After all, in TEXAS, we put saddles on the larger
fleas and let kids ride them :-).
 
Thanks for the response though.
 
> Does anyone know of a shelter... in the southeast?
 
Try Ferret Fanciers of Indian River County.  I am not sure of the address.  I
am sure that someone on the list will have it.
 
Or if you can make it as far as Louisiana (I would be willing to drive that
far to see to it that they get a good home), I have two NAFA registered, Gold
Champion jills (black siamese) who are looking for a good home *TOGETHER*.
They are virtually identical twins who want to be pets, but would not mind
being bred once or twice, in order to carry on their championship line.  We
had to buy them back from the couple that originally bought them, because
they ran into some problems and could not keep them.  That is our policy.  We
will always buy one of our ferrets back, rather than risk it going to a bad
home.
 
-----------------
"Cats may be cool, but Carpet Sharks rule!"
 
John Gaver ([log in to unmask])
 
[Posted in FML issue 0501]