The cute one first:  This month's Household Pet Digest has an adorable
picture of a sable ferret on the cover - a closeup of the face.  There
seems to be a series of ferret care articles in the works; the first
one is "An owner's guide to ferret health care: Starting out right."
It covers anal gland impactions, aplastic anemia, cardiomyopathy, cata-
racts, swallowed foreign bodies, and heatstroke.  The next article is
supposed to be on infectious diseases.  Looks pretty good, from my quick
reading of it, but there's no author cited.  There's also an ad for a
ferret calendar (with the address in CA), and 2 ads for Deborah Jeans'
wonderful ferret book - even a picture of her and her ferrets (I'm assuming
that from the cards we sent to her through Carla, she only has 1 left).
I also noticed a ferret items catalog (based in CA too).
 
Now the weird item:  Someone in a past FML asked if humans could get ear
mites.  In the Sept. 1, 1993 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary
Society (vol. 203 (5), 606-607), a Dr. R.A. Lopez intentionally infected
himself with cat ear mites, evidently to get an idea of what it was like,
and then cured himself of them after a time!  I got this info in a very
shortened form, so I don't know the details.  Anyone care to hunt down the
article and enlighten us on what our little dears may be going through?
Please forgive any shaky info above; I haven't seen the article.
 
Happy ferreting-
Denise,
   * Rocko & Randall
   * Grumpy (teddy bear hamster)
 
 
[Posted in FML issue 0979]