Hi FML!  This is ELizabeth, daughter of the bone head Bob who loves to bore
people to death with his wit.  Yawn.  Dad is home now, but *very* tired from
his vacation, and bumping around the house like a zombie from the 60s.  All
except for today when we was bumping around the vets with Simon who got sick
real fast.  Dad says he was fooled into thinking it was something stuck in
Simon's intestines, but instead it was Simon's heart.
 
When dad got home, the first thing he did was to fall flat on the floor of
his library-office and let the ferrets run all over him.  Dad loves to
whistle bird calls, and I have seen him whistle cardinals down to him here
(and blue jays out in California), and he has a bird whistle he uses to get
the ferrets out to play.  I don't mean a real whistle, but one he has made
up for the ferrets.  He says its a mixture of a bobwhite and an eagle, and
I don't know if that's true, but it sure brings in the ferrets.
 
Anyhow, dad is on the floor and he lets out this whistle and the ferrets
mob him.  And I mean mob.  He had all of them jumping on him, and running
around in circles and bumping into things and frizzed up.  Tui was leaping
on dad and grabbing his feet and Jezabel was all but spinning in circles on
dad's back.  It was amazing!  Sam clamped down on the insdie of dad's
elbow, which was very sore because of something that happened while dad was
on vacation, and dad let out a yell and all the ferrets went even wilder.
Carbone started chewing on dad's shoe laces and Tui and Bear decided
something coll was stuck down in dad's shoe, somewhere past his foot, and
tried to climb in.  I think Nosette was trying to suck dad's brains out
through his ear, and Amber was licking dad's eyebrows.  Foster was licking
dad on the chin, and Crystal was trying to pull dad under the desk by his
thumb.
 
Dad started giggling.  Well, he was also saying "ow" a lot at the same time,
so I decided to pull some of the monsters off him, but he pleaded with me
to stop, saying it was times like these that made life worthwhile.  I don't
know about that, because it seemed to me that dad was being slowly chewed
into small little pieces, and we should start looking for buttons in the
ferret poopie.  But dad loved it, and after about an half hour or so, the
bleeding seemed to stop.  Dad was in heaven, you can tell.  That was when
he noticed Simon wasn't acting right.
 
Its amazing.  Dad has this sort of radar for sick ferrets and while he was
still playing with the ferrets, he asked if I noticed Simon was sick or
anything.  I have helped out all week, and even did the twice a day
play-time thing he insists on, and never noticed anything.  But dad just
scoops Simon up and pokes and prods him, then even gets out the stethoscope
and listens to him breathe.  Then he immediately asks if I would drive him
to the vet, saying Simon either has a bowel obstruction or something hurting
his GI tract.  Dad never brings a ferret to the vet alone, but always takes
a second ferret to keep them company, so Dad, Simon, Moose and I drove to
the vet.  I felt really bad, because I thought Simon might have eaten
something I might have left down on the floor, but dad kept telling me he
didn't think so, because Simon wasn't a chewer and that it might be
something inside Simon causing the problem.
 
As it turned out, dad was right and wrong.  It wasn't a bowel obstruction
like a piece of rubber, but Simon's stomach and liver were obstructed
because there was so much fluid in his chest it was pushing on the tubes.
Dad and the vet poured over the xrays and dad just looked sad when they
pointed to the xray of Simon's heart.  They showed it to me but were
spouting tech talk so I never really understood what they were driving at,
but they both said "lasix" (sp?) at the same time.  The end of the story is,
the first day dad is home he spends it at the vet, and is, in fact, sleeping
there on a cot right now, and I, instead of the date I was planning to have,
am at his house baby-setting ferrets again.  Oh.  bother!
 
Elizabeth, former chief pooper picker upper and currently owed big time by
dad
[Posted in FML issue 2372]