On Easter Sunday, our two year old male decided to try to fly.  As the day
was starting to warm, I had the bedroom window open a crack.  While Karen
and I were involved in other things, Bandit climbed a cat condo under the
window and tried out his flying skills.  He fell approx.  15 feet onto our
tar driveway.  The first we knew of this was when we heard Bigfoot (one of
the cats) meowing on the driveway.  Karen looked out the window, and saw
Bigfoot (who normally wants nothing to do with the ferrets) standing over
Bandit and meowing at the top of his lungs.  It was as if he recognized that
the ferret didn't belong outside or that it was hurt.  Karen ran down and
brought him in from the driveway and alerted me.  We checked him over
thouroughly, and found only one obvious injury- a scrape on his lower jaw
under his chin.  Although there were no apparent injuries other than that,
we both noticed that he appeared a little sluggish.  We proceeded to take
him to the vet for a full examination.  Turns out, he must have had SOME
flying squirrel in him.  Other than the bruised chin, his only injuries were
that he hyperextended his shoulders.  He was tender for a few days, but on
Friday was back to his usual hopping and dooking, and flying attacks on my
socks.  One interesting thing to note: Chanel, the dominant one of our four
ferrets, who was always kind of a loner or outsider, started to immediately
'mother' Bandit when they were together.  This included her cleaning his
scraped chin, and sleeping with him whenever they slept.  Interesting,
seeing as her previous contact with him over the past 8 months has been only
to beat him up until he cried.  (We think she was acting out because she was
a rescue we took in, who had been neglected and possibly abused.  The reason
she ended up with us is that she was found in a cat carrier in a dumpster by
a trash pickup man.) We have high hopes that she will continue to be nice to
Bandit now that he is feeling better.  We would also like to thank Meg
Carpenter for being available to answer our questions during a time when we
could not contact our regular vet.  Aside: isn't it great to no longer live
in an FFZ?  Bandit has seen more vets in the past week than he saw in his
entire life.
 
-Peter & Karen (The Humans)
-Bigfoot, Greybear & Tiger Lily (The Cats)
-Bandit, Coco, Chanel & Panda Bear (The Ferrets)
[Posted in FML issue 1542]