>From the Charlotte Observer (6 February 1991) reprinted without permission
(of course!):
 
              PET FERRET ATTACKS, KILLS 2 1/2 - MONTH-OLD BABY
 
    Portland, Ore. -- A 2 1/2 -month-old baby died after she was attacked
in her sleep by the family's pet ferret.
    Vivian Bettencourt bled to death after she was repeatedly bitten,
state medical examiner Dr. Larry Lewman said.  Lewman said he knew of no
other fatal ferret attacks anywhere else in the United States, although the
19- to 21-inch-long animals, relatives of weasels, minks and otters are
blamed for numerous attacks on people.
 
           *****************************************************
 
This sounds like a real strange one to me.  Most ferrets I know might take
a nip at you, but they are rarely tennacious enough bite "repeatedly."  I
suppose that repeated bites to the neck, severing vital blood vessles might
result in loss of enough blood to kill a small child, but I also can't
imagine a 2 1/2 year old sitting still for this type of punishment.  Do we
have a singular case here (which we ought to investigate as a group) or just
another piece of anti-ferret hysteria of the type we are so familiar with,
particularly on the West Coast?  Does anyone have any further details of
this alleged attack?
 
Len Bliss
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC
 
[It's not the first time this has happened (two previous deaths have
been documented and have appeared in the mailing list - one in Denver
and one in the UK somewhere).  However, one should be cautious at taking
this (or any) report at face value.  One needs to know a lot more about
the incident before passing any judgement.  The two that have been described
before are actually as a result of extreme parental negligence, neglect,
drunkeness, and child as well as animal abuse.  The parents in *both*
cases were fully responsible and were the *cause* of their own child's death.
And finally, one should consider this in balance with other pets - according
to statistics, out of every million dogs, there are somewhere around 1500
serious (permanently disfiguring) or fatal injuries to humans per year.
The current accepted rate for ferrets is somewhere on the order of LESS THAN
1 serious or fatal injury to humans per million ferrets per year.  That's
right, about a 1000-fold *higher* incidence per dog than per ferret.
Current estimates place the number of ferrets in the United States at
5 million.
 
A 2 1/2 month old baby isn't capable of very much in the way of evasion,
when you consider that an adult male ferret could probably kill
most cats which are far better able to defend themselves...  One wonders,
however, why in hell didn't the parents hear the baby's screams?  Is this yet
another case of drunken parents tossing a ferret into the baby's crib to keep
the child quiet and promptly collapsing in a drunken stupor or wandering off
to the nearest tavern? ]
                                                                          
[Posted in FML 0123]