I've been a bit under the weather because of incompatibility between my
body and a new medication I am taking.  I think "beta blocker" stands for
brain blocker.  I am sleeping 24/7.  Well, when I am not caring for
Fraggle.  But I AM asleep now.... Fraggle is doing wonderful!  She is
eating Bob's Chicken Gravy like a greedy little pig and her once slightly
pinched belly is now bulging like an internet geek after a six pack of Jolt
and two dozen twinkies.  She and Sam Luc are cutting up in the hospital
cage, and while her contribution is mostly watching, she still managed to
help pull everything from the top of the cage into the litter box at the
bottom of the cage (aka: the poop deck).
 
Q: "DO YOU REALLY PUT A FERRET IN WITH ONE THAT JUST HAD SURGERY???!!!"
 
A: Yep, just after I flay their skin off their bodies with a butter knife
and dip them in lemon juice.
 
You aren't the kind of person who puts a bike helmet on your kid when they
set in a rocking chair, are you?  Let's put it this way.  Back in the Late
Paleolithic, my first job was as a hospital orderly.  I was hired the
summer I turned 16 (back then, you had to be 16 just to visit someone in
the hospital).  By the time I was a senior, I was working full time in the
ICU/CCU.  When I turned 18, I was invited to participate in my dear uncle's
war games, but because I was upset that I would no longer be attending med
school like I planned, I thought a sailor's life was the life for me.
Since the religious preference question was answered "Friends," I was sent
to corps school, then OR school, then field med school.  After a bit of on
the job training, under fire so to speak, I eventually ended up at Balboa,
in sunny San Diego, where I excelled in passing out stuff during neuro,
cardiac, ortho and finally plastic surgery.  After an emotional retirement,
I took my free licenses and worked on ambulances, in emergency rooms, and
as a Code Blue tech until I earned my degree in photojournalism.  Well,
until I got my first job in photojournalism.  During my photo daze, I
helped out a bit on a couple of volunteer fire departments, where I learned
to drink a lot of beer among other things.  The other things was helping
out in wildlife rescue and cat shelters.  When I discovered journalism was
yellower than a heavy smoker's back teeth, I returned to school for degrees
in Zool and one in Archy, did my work on mink, worked in a mustelid
shelter, and volunteered at a local vet hospital that ran a wildlife
rehab.  During that time, I TAUGHT the lab section for Human Anatomy AND
Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy for 4 semesters.  I have aced EVERY anatomy
and physiology class required for vet school graduation with a few extra
tossed in.  I am quite literally an expert at identifying bone fragments,
and have analyzed many bones for several law enforcement agencies, where
I've even courted problems.  I've owned ferrets since the mid 1980s, more
than a dozen (once up to 25 plus 4 temps) for the last 5 years, and have
survived a dozen ferret deaths.  And that don't even begin to count the
pets I've owned.
 
Now, with all that medical, surgical, emergency, anatomical and rehab
experience, don't you think I could recognize a danger if placing Fraggle
in the same cage with her bonded buddy actually caused one?  Get real.
Worry about your own ferrets and stop shouting.
 
Q: "I heard you don't cage your ferrets....is that true?"
 
A: Well, ferts have masks, masks are worn by criminals, who become cons,
who fly on Con Air, saved by a Cage, who never saved my ferts.  Yep, 'tis
true.
 
I only cage them once a week for a few hours while I field day the carpeted
areas, or when they are sick.  Freedom is a precious thing.
 
Q: "Does ANYONE know where ferrets were domesticated?"
 
A: Oh sure, but since they have been dead for a couple of thousand years,
they aren't saying.
 
NO one knows.  Fact of life.  If anyone tells you any place, at any time,
they are either misinformed or lying.  Unless they say it was Egypt, in
which case they are the picture example in the dictionary, right next to
the word "Wrong."
 
Bob C and 16 Mo' Surgical Cut Ups
[Posted in FML issue 3049]