Hello, I'm Debra Thomason.  Our household in Fort Worth, Texas, consists
of me, my husband Scott, our 4-month-old daughter Julianna, and three
ferrets.  Thor is 6 years old, and a roaned sable that wanted to be a blaze
but didn't make it.  He was adopted from a person running an ad in the
newspaper at 6 months, still whole.  He came from a private breeder.
Sierra is a 5 year old silver we got from a petstore I went into in search
of fish food.  We forgot the fish food.  The store owner said she was bred
in Canada, we don't know by whom.  Jewel is about 2 years, possibly as much
as 6 months less, and came to us via a phone call from a local municipal
animal control.  We picked her up and just kept her.  She's a chocolate
sable.  Our first ferret was Pixie, a MF sable from a pet store, who came
to live with us in 1993.  We'd spent 9 months reading about ferrets on
bulletin board services and finally brought one home as a part of the
healing process after a miscarriage.  Shadow and Laska followed that year,
from a shelter adoption and a personal rescue respectively.  They were MF
too, and all three of those died of adrenal disease or insulinoma at about
5 years of age.  Thankfully all of the current bunch are healthy!  I
started reading the FML when it was posted (by BIG, I think, before he was
moderator?) to the GEnie boards or archives in 1992 or so.  I subscribed
directly as soon as I had e-mail that would handle it, probably in late
1993 or early 1994.
[Posted in FML issue 2884]