My bath bead story is a little less pleasant...:) I was wrapping Christmas
gifts (including bath beads) with my roomate, and we noticed Anastasia
doing that backing-around thing ferrets do when they're feeling queasy.  I
picked her up and noticed she smelled *awfully* fruity for a ferret.  When
I put her down, she started throwing up foamy white stuff, and I got really
worried, thinking she had eaten a bath bead.  We searched for bead remains,
and found nothing.  My roomate is a veterinary tech (yes, it is wonderful
having her around), and thought since we couldn't find the bead, we should
figure out if she was likely to have eaten the whole thing.  So we took a
bead into the bathroom, and she volunteered to test.  Sniff sniff, it
smells sweet.  Lick, it tastes sweetish.  She poked a hole in the bead and
put a bit on her tongue and *immediately* spit it back into the sink,
rinsed her mouth and spit again.  It was so bitter, she doubted Stasia
could have eaten it, and was probably just feeling queasy from the taste
(as my roommate now was!).  So we kept an eye on Stasia, and gave her some
ferretone to take the taste away, and she was fine (though both she and my
roommate drooled for a while).
 
The moral being, all bath beads are not alike, and I have no doubt if
Stasia had managed to choke down more of it, she would have been *very*
sick (I later found a punctured but nearly whole bead in her hidey-hole).
That, and it's good to live with people who will sacrifce themselves for
the sake of your pets!
 
Megan & Co.
[Posted in FML issue 2618]