Usually, when there is anything written about household dangers to ferrets I
sit back and feel quite smug that after 20 years in this house with small
mammals and 15 years with ferrets under foot, my house is as safe a place as
anyone can make for a ferret,we even have half doors on every room in the
house.  Yesterday, if I had not been close enough to hear what might have
been her last gasp, my precious little Delphia would be dead.
 
The culprit is our baseboard heating system.  Not the old rigid cast iron
type, but the new sheet metal baseboards. Where the baseboard butts up
against a wall (at a corner) rather than fitting into an end peice, it is
mearly cut flush to the wall,and the end sheet metal acts like a spring,when
a small ferret comes from under the baseboard and pushes its head up against
the top peice, it flexes, the head and neck fit through but the body
doesn't,on pulling the head back, it goes against the springy sharp edge
which presses harder the more the ferret struggles and can either break the
windpipe or sever the throat.  Luckily I was right there to bend the peice up
and release Delphia's head and neck before any real damage was done.
The fix for this is very simple, either pull the top piece of the baseboard
back a few inches or cut it or take pliers and bend it a few inches before it
reaches the wall.
 
On voting for what we want the list to continue as, I too would love it to
stay just as it is,a list.  I feel funny about saying this though because I
can't do anything to help with it and it means I want someone else to do this
list for me.  Very few of us have the capabilities to maintain a list like
this,and who ever does finally do it will be doing an awful lot for us and
there is not much we can do in return.  Jay and I both love this list and if
there is anything we can do to help whoever takes it over, just let us know.
       Jay & Gale (owned by Delphia and Dickens)
 
[Posted in FML issue 0930]