Someone asked "how would a bare wire floor remove a foot"?  Well, I'll tell
you how.  O.K., it's a story about a rat, but the same thing could happen to
a ferret or any other small critter.  Someone took the pregnant mother rat
out of her aquarium to hold her, then passed her along to someone else.
This person put her back in a wire cage (which had been her previous cage).
She had the babies on bare wire.  The owner of the rat picked her up to put
her back in the aquarium.  As he was picking up the newborn babies, one of
their feet was in the wire and it just popped off.  Fortunatly, there was
not a lot of blood and the wound healed on it's own.  So, that is the story
of my sweet Stumpy rat who lived a good life with a little help from me.
So, as for a ferret or such, the breeder may think it was born that way.
(But, if they hose off their ferrets, they probably don't care one way or
the other).
[Posted in FML issue 1839]