I would like to know some more details on the case, too.  As someone already
mentioned, was the cage locked?  Were there any OTHER animals in the house
(particularly cats)?  Has anyone considered that possibly a human did it,
maybe one of the parents?  (not that they bit the baby, but possibly stabbed
it with something.)
 
Scenario - Mom freaks out because baby won't stop crying.  Dad comes home,
feels sympathy, rushes baby to hospital.  Ferret gets blamed, since Dad
doesn't want Mom to go to Jail.  You hear stuff like that on the news all
the time.  I don't want to blame grieving parents, but everything thus far
points to them being really lousy parents.  (They were incoherently drunk
while their baby was screaming in pain right next to them... I rest my
case.) That doesn't automatically mean they inflicted the harm themselves,
but I wouldn't want to see it ruled out, either.
 
I find it somewhat strange that although they were incoherent at the time,
they woke up screaming "the ferret did it!", when there was no indication
that the ferret had.  Given the circumstances, wouldn't you think they would
be saying "I don't know what happened, we just woke up and the baby was all
bloody"?  In my opinion, that reeks of a fabricated story to take the blame
off of the real culprit.
 
I don't drink, so I really am no expert, but the amounts of beer given in
the preliminary reports didn't seem like enough alcohol to completely knock
someone out to the point that they wouldn't hear their baby screaming in
terror right next to them.  Am I wrong?
 
If the ferret were an aggressive ferret their story would make sense.  As it
would if their were blood on the ferret.  Right now the chances seem kind of
slim - although the milk theory is plausible, just unlikely given the facts
that we have.
 
Do we know where on the baby the bites were?  Were they in "milky areas"
(chin, hands, chest...)?
 
- Nancy
 
-----
Nancy L. Stephens
 
[log in to unmask]
Senior Systems Analyst
TCIM Services, Inc.
[Posted in FML issue 2229]