Have now personally heard reports of three cases in which ferrets had severe
runs combined with mouth sores, and one report second hand.  One looked like
full-blown nastiest ECE, one was between that and mild runs, one had mild
runs but the worst of the mouth sores reported.  The second hand report one
sounds like the sores and the runs were very bad.  Could be multiple things
out there which also carry mouth sores, but folks are honing in on the
sores.  Could the sores be part of a general mucus membrane inflammatory
process?  The other grouping which was cohesive involved kidney illness.
Both groups reported dehydration problems.
 
Ah, regional jokes are hard to understand between countries some times.
In the US the jokes are that Southerners are inbred, use out-houses, and
wasp-waisted women will say within 3 seconds of your crossing the threshold
"Oh, where are my manners?" and then pass you a mint julip with arsenic.
The jokes about the North Easterners is that we are all cold and selfish,
with no sex lives, possibly robots (but very good ones) or androids (I'll
never tell.), and constantly trying to control the West becasue we are all
have JD Rockefeller cloned brains (This part believed by some to the point
where if an organization in the East tries to help out West it is accused of
trying to subjugate the West but if it doesn't do anything it's accused of
being cold and self-centered.) Mid-Westerners are thought to be all big
blondes who serve everything with either Cool Whip or Mayonnaise, especially
with hot dish or jello (Pass the mint juleps!) and wouldn't know an emotion
if it slapped them in the face except when they run from the suana to the
hole in the frozen lake.  The person was just joking about the AC, that's
all.  Hey, my hubby was brought up in Montana (You know that place where you
find only grade school educations, mad men suantering the streets on their
bow legs with bowie knives in their boots, women in curlers driving pick-up
trucks with gun racks...) so we KNOW that the Canadian Provences also have
this type of good natured ribbing, because Montanans get it from Canadians
as well as from folk in the States.
 
Reminder:  hair loss confined to only the tail is very commonly acne, not
adrenal...
 
I sincerely hope that no one here will want o get a primate after the post
on the monkey and ferret.  For many years I studied primatology till a
tropical illness caught in Suriname stopped me.  The typical pet monkey
dies at a very young age, often has rickets (since many of them are NW and
require more light and more vitamin D than old world monkeys).  Most have
too little space and not enough exrecise to be healthy.  Many go insane
because most of the species are troop animals requiring a lot of contact
which reflects their species' behaviors.  The typical way that one is
obtained from the wild is that the parent (in some cases parents) and often
other troop members are killed for food and any young surviving the fall
from the trees (arboreal species) are raised by the villages till a smuggler
buys up a bunch.  In one study of intercepted wooley monkey young there were
usually about 20 baby monkeys to a box, and typically all but one to three
had already died and the remaining ones were in those dark areas with
corpses.  I won't say any more on this topic since it's off-topic and
suspect that the person who wrote did not know these things, but I don't
want to see the continued decimation of threatened and endangered species or
the abuse of animals by pet trade in primates.  A typical monkey type which
would survive 25 to 35 years in the wild or in a zoo under the right
conditions normally lives about 5 years as a pet from what I have read.
(Oh, they often carry illnesses humans can get, too, and some species can do
serious damage if they go insane.) If anyone wants to discuss this off-list
I'll do so.
 
Sukie
[Posted in FML issue 2387]