Hello everyone and first and foremost, I want to send out a heartfelt thank
you to all the people who have responded to my past posts.  You all have
helped me out more then words can ever express and I am grateful for such a
mailing list.  Now I want to share something that happened to me a few
weeks ago and I sure hope it helps people to realize the importance of
quarantine, something I knew about, but was too stupid to follow thru on.
 
I rescued a 6 week old kit from a potentially life threatening situation on
Memorial Day weekend.  The woman had his papers and he is a Marshall Farms
ferret but she could no longer keep him <she had him for a total of 3
days!!!!> so I got the message from a friend of mine that she wanted him
to have a good home and I went out and got him.  He appeared to be in
excellent health, but was so scared because of the 3 days of hell he got
from this woman's husband.  I integrated him with my ferrets and they all
accepted him except for three of them who were literally out for blood.  So
I put him in with the other 6 who took to him just fine and within three
days one of my ferrets was exhibiting the classic signs of ECE.  Within 3
days more the others all got it and let me tell you, 9 fuzzbutts with ECE
is no picnic.  It was a real mess cleaning cages, administering meds and
watching their food and water intake.  Most of them faired well in
recovering but one did not do so great and I won't get into those
particulars.  He is fine now tho.
 
Moral of this story.  QUARANTINE, QUARANTINE, QUARANTINE!!  You just never
know what your healthy fuzzbutts can get from a new ferret and even tho my
new guy looked healthy, I was told that kits sometimes can be carriers and
never show signs of ECE.  It was something I will never forget.
 
Also, my heartfelt sympathy to all those who have lost fuzzies recently.
--Diane--
[Posted in FML issue 2714]