All of the posts mentioned dead or injured birds, and that is the
common thing, but I recall someone posting either in the early FML
or in the lists before it who wound up with a ferret who lost a large
part of a hand to a large bird, and if memory serves the bird did not
survive, so it can get bad in both directions. (It is possible that the
post was not in the very early FML but later in the archived sections
if the person was commenting during the time when our Scooter needed
two sequential amputation surgeries for a deformed hand, so it might
be in the FML Archives.)

There have been some people who posted here who had ferrets who could
get along with rabbits, and even one who adopted a mouse and would
feed it kibbles, but I have never heard of any ferrets who got along
with birds in my 30 years with ferrets and something over 25 years of
reading on ferret lists (though back then there was only one list with
only a very few people). Years ago there was a pet store person, Mark
(Marone? or something similar) who had one ferret who got along with
all mammals of similar or larger sizes, but he said that even with that
one special ferret he had to not have any birds out except for the very
large ones and then only with decent distance between them and careful
supervision by a whole team of animal wranglers, or he might wind up
with two dead animals, bird and ferret.

Anyway, preventable foot amputation, like preventable death is a truly
bad thing.

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)

[Posted in FML 7190]