Fertbert would (of course) be an embezzler whose personality was just so
mesmeric that no one would ever fire him.
 
Steve is very allergic to the musk of whole males, but not at all allergic
to other ferrets.  People vary.
 
Candy, you can read about Juvenile Lymphoma in the Lymphoma FAQs.  (ALL the
FAQs come highly recommended.) JL is a disease which rapidly savages through
a kit; it was the single worst ferret disease experience we ever went
through.  Fortunately, it is mercifully rare.
 
Niki, Many years ago Meltdown was quite like your little one.  Turned out
that she had a secondary fungal infection; all was fine once that was
treated.
 
K, do NOT know if it is true (Bob will be the one who will have the
references, just as he has the references which show that there is NOT
substantive evidence of ferrets having actually been domesticated first in
Egypt.) but have read that ferrets were ineffective here for obtaining
rabbits since the NW ones they encountered tended to have widely distributed
separate family burrows, rather than large and interconnected warrens.  (Of
course, Beth LIVES in Warren, so maybe there are or have been ones (bad
joke); I'm NOT into Leptera.) Still, this might be an important direction
for you to look when writing about the history of ferrets vs.  terriers as
rabbit hunting companions.
 
Actual mental impairment is very rare in ferrets.  We used to keep track of
cases since Ruffle had that difficulty among her others.  In her case it
appeared to be genetic.  The other cases we know of traced back to early
fevers.  Ruffle was never-the-less trainable, but what took weeks for others
would take years for her.  She was very frustrated by her lack of
understanding, and it took three years for her to realize that words (even
ones such as "raisin", tube-treat", and "treat", and her name) meant
anything.  This meant that she bit often and badly for her first three years
and never again afterward, when things made a bit of sense and she knew that
we would look at her reactions to words and respond to her reactions.  She
required extra, extra gentleness and kindness -- even more than the abuse
victims we've known.  She was also completely worth it.  Someone (Barb, was
it you?) had one who suffered a high fever and afterward was a very gentle
teddybear but very mentally slow.  The other two cases we heard of both bit
very badly after their early high fevers and those who had them cared for
them but did not risk doing the extensive interactions we used -- never
heard of any improvement for them.
 
Sukie
[Posted in FML issue 1869]