Please good people, I do want to respond to each and everyone of you and
today just couldn't find the time.  So tomorrow . . . hopefully.
 
And Ruprect Kirche, aka Bob Church, thanks for the attention to my concerns
and suggestions.  In the meantime may I appeal to the list readers,
especially in my local area of Seattle, please consider helping me get off
to a good start by donating your beloved and deceased ferret to Ferrets NW.
I am embarking on a study of the dentition of ferrets and I anticipate the
need for a minimum of 50 recently deceased ferrets.  These ferrets must
have the best documentation possible to prove their age at death.  If
required I will pay the postage to FNW when the deceased ferret is shipped
from your vet to my vet.  I want ferrets of as many different ages as
possible, including kits.  Your ferret remains will be cremated and buried
with honor or the ashes will be returned, your choice.  Just as soon as I
can put together a generic letter to all the local vets, I will ask them
to consider helping me too.  All donors will be listed on a dedication page
in the guide along with the name(s) of their ferret(s) unless otherwise
requested.
 
My objective is to establish the age of live ferrets by detailed study of
the entire skulls of deceased ferrets with special attention to the oral
cavity and their dentition.  I hope then to provide to the ferret community
a highly detailed but simple guide to fixing the age of a living ferret by
comparing its teeth and other aspects of its oral cavity with exquisitely
detailed photographs and interpretive black & white line drawings.  Some
day someone will be able to come to me (or use my guide) with a ferret of
known age and ask me to estimate its age.  Hopefully I won't be too far
off.  But the real reason will be to help shelter operators more accurately
establish the age of ferrets that come to them of unknown ages, sources,
or owners.  As you may assume, adopters of shelter ferrets would certainly
feel more secure in their adoptees if they could be assured that the
estimated age of an hitherto unknown aged ferret has been determined as
accurately as possible by a simple dentition (& other factors) examination.
Maybe yes, maybe no.
 
We won't know unless we try, and man-o-man, most everybody I know says
that I'm the most trying guy there is!
 
Please help me.
Thanks,
Edward Lipinski at FNW, Mercer Island.
[Posted in FML issue 2887]