Hi FML'ers!
 
I've been off line moving and before that I was just lurking for a while!
Anyway, I missed the FML while I was gone, partly because I had a ton of
things go wrong!  I've always considered my ferret family pretty lucky, we
haven't suffered from many illness, no one has ever gotten lost, and I've
never had problems introducing a new ferret.  Suddenly all three happened
over the course of the last 2 months!
 
Please, please, if you think that your house is safe and your ferret can't
escape outside, re-consider.  I've had ferrets for 7 years and never had a
problem.  One week before we had to move, my blind & deaf girl, Quincy,
escaped outside.  The most horrible thing about it (other than she is
totally helpless) was that we had no idea when she got out the door.  It
happened during a two weeks of solid rain everyday.  (very unusual for
Montana) I had nightmares of all the horrid things that were happening to
her outside.  I won't go into that because they were pretty awful.  How do
you find a ferret who is totally deaf and can't see?  We walked the
neighborhood in the evenings and told all of our neighbors what was going
on.  The time came for us to leave and still no word of Quincy.  We placed
an ad in the newspaper with a reward.  Still nothing.
 
Strangely enough, our closest friends moved into the house we had rented.
One week after we had moved and 3 weeks after she had escaped the house, we
received a call from our friends saying someone had contacted them at our
old address.  We called the people, and they had her!  They had taken
excellent care of her and bought her a whole bunch of stuff.  They had just
about given up on finding her owners.  She had been found in a garage in
our neighborhood, and that person did not know what to do with her and had
called them.  We got her back, and I'm a d@mn sight less complacent about
the doors and windows in this new house!
 
So, one crisis averted and on to the next one...
 
We have 3 ferrets, 2 females and one male.  2 of them are over 6 and the
other is about 3.  Never had a problem introducing them to each other.
Ferret math strikes in an ugly way (an ugly pet store, I should say) and we
rescue a new pathetic baby ferret.  We bring her home, and the poop hits the
fan, literally.  All those things I've never bothered reading about how to
introduce a new ferret suddenly come back to haunt me.  Our youngest ferret,
Mischieva literally hunts the newest one.  She has actually bitten the baby
on the nose hard enough to make her bleed, twice.  We've had to keep Shadow
(the baby) completely separated.  She starts screaming and the poop
starts-a-flyin' when she meets up with any of our ferrets.  We are hoping
that when she gains some weight and gets bigger, we can put things on equal
footing.  I would have never expected this hunting behavior from Mischieva,
she's such a good natured ferret.
 
And the final chapter...
 
All of our ferts have enjoyed great health.  I always felt terrible reading
about those who are dealing with insulinoma and adrenal disease.  So
suddenly Quincy hits a down slide.  She wouldn't eat or drink, her stool was
yellow, walked like a drunken sailor and lost enough body weight to scare me
to death.  One emergency trip to a new vet that we don't know later, we are
armed with anti-biotics and glucose to see if she has insulinoma.  I am just
about hysterical in the vet's office because she is talking insulinoma and
I'm hearing "she's 6 years old, there's no way we can do the surgery, are
we supposed to let her waste away and die?" Quincy goes on the glucose and
it doesn't do a thing for her.  No reaction what so ever.  I'm hoping this
means she doesn't actually have it.  So she's still not eating, drinking,
and still having problems walking.  On to prednisone she goes.  This and
the anti-biotics have done wonders.  After 4 days of force feeding, (which
I've never had to do before), force watering,( which was just as fun), and
furiously reading saved FML's for the duck soup recipe (THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU!), my Quincy was pretty much back to her old self.  We are now on
the 10th day of anti-biotics, she goes off of those today.  The prednisone
is being slowly weaned from her.  We have 5 more days of that.  I'm hoping
that we won't have any relapse's of whatever the problem was.
 
Anyway, I've never been so glad to be an informed ferret owner.  Without
all of you, I would not have had a clue what to do in any of the above
situations.  Even though I wasn't on the list at the time, I sure used it
as a reference.  Thanks to you I was able to survive these events and make
informed choices about what needed to be done.
 
I love you fellow fert fanciers...
 
Liz Zink
Quincy-I'm feeling much better mom, I'm ready for treats now
Sinbad- What is that little rat crawling around here anyway, I'll just make
sure it knows  who the boss in this house is!
Mischieva-I'm a hunting for a ferret, I'm a hunting for a ferret, I'm gonna
eat me a ferret...
Shadow-too damn scared to say hi.
[Posted in FML issue 2387]