Things are pretty busy here; so busy I forgot to study for an exam and
wounded myself with a "B." I've pulled lots of questions from a heap 'o
mail, and will be sending them in when possible.
Q: What do you really do for a living?
A: I'm a graduate student. What makes you think I'm living? Existing
mabye. Certainly suffering. But living?
Ok, I guess it refers to my academic studies. It's kind of hard to explain,
because it depends on who I'm working for, or the questions I'm trying to
answer. Basically, I'm an osteologist; someone who studies bone- human and
animal. I basically do the same thing as a forensic scientist, except they
only have to worry about one species, and I have hundreds. I normally limit
myself to terrestrial vertebrates, but am quite familiar with marine and
aquatic species. Usually I work for archaeologists, and am then termed a
zooarchaeologist, except in Europe where its an archaeozoologist. When I
work for geologists, I'm a paleontologist. It's all the same thing, really.
Personally, I consider myself an evolutionary paleozoologist, and use
mustelids and rodents in the remodeling of ancient environments. Currently
(besides my dissertation) I am finishing a book on osteology, starting a
book on comparative osteology for North American wild mammals, working on
the origin of the domesticated ferret, running experiments concerning the
diagenesis of bone, photographing hundreds of samples of bone under the SEM,
and studying the contents of about 100 boxes of tiny fragmented bones from
an archaeological site in Washington. I am also preparing three
presentations, five articles for journal publication, and a chapter in an
edited volume. In my spare time I breathe. Sometimes I eat.
Q: When your 18 ferrets were sick, you mentioned you daily checked their
stool. How could you keep it separate?
A: Expert juggling.
I can't do an effective job when they run around the house, unless I am
there when the poop hit the fan. But since I maintain their photoperiods by
putting them to bed each night, I can check the cage poop pan each morning
for tarries, bloodies or greenies. I also lift their tails for clues, which
are usually apparent when they are having trouble.I also keep the sick
monsters in a separate cage than the others, so I just scan for
abnormalities. Since the same beasts go in the same cages nightly (during
this period of illness) and I have three ferrets per cage, its fairly simple
to figure out the ferts with the squirts.
I have a bound composition book I use to record ferret stuff in, and keep
notes faithfully. The entries are sometimes terse, like "10-05-96: Tarry
stool. Simon?" but they allow me to track changes and problems, and I can
always look back for trends. I record weights, reactions to shots, anything
that might be of value later. It only takes a few minutes, and is well
worth the time. I showed it to my vet, and she couldn't believe it; she
asked if she could show it to her clients who have pets with serious
illnesses. Since she gave me a sucker, I said ok.
Oh yeah, use a pencil or waterproof ink only. Trust me, but don't ask.
Q: How do you get all your ferrets to get along?
A: I play Joan Baez, Melanie and Donovan CDs to bring the decade of peace
and love into my frontroom. The ferrets walk around in a daze, but to
really quiet them down, I drop in Loggins singing "Please come to Boston."
I don't do anything; I let them work it out, and only stop things when the
fight causes the dreaded "poop fling" or the "stinky butt." On occasion, I
might rescue someone who has lost several times in the last few minutes, but
normally I look them in the eye and say, "Next time you'll think before
biting my toes!" Sometimes a ferret just may not like another ferret, and
nothing is going to change that, but usually, once they get used to each
other, they get along pretty well. You will always have the occasional
squabble, but all-in-all, mine do just fine. BTW, a friend left for several
months and I'm watching his *whole* male (3 years old), and he runs with my
18 just as if he was one of the gang.
I guess the hardest thing is waiting for the fighting to stop, but hey, if
you've ever raised human children, you've learned it never will. Oh yeah,
noise means nothing. Often I hear noise, but nothing is happening, or the
loudest is winning the fight. Just like people. Don't expect ferrets to be
any different that you and your SO. You fight, they fight. Ah, life...
Mo' Bob and the 18 Monkeysnakes (and 1 angel Gus)
Opps, accidentaly forget to paste this in. So you get two postsfor the
price of one, he he he.
Q: Why do you advocate giving bone to ferrets? I've always heard it is
dangerous, and they can choke on the splinters.
A: I'm a Ca Ca Fish and Gestapo agent secretly trying to choke all ferrets
and save Amerika from left-wing commie pinko animal lovers.
Disclaimer: The following is an opinion. I do not advocate anything I say,
so you can just ignore it, even though I am right.
If eating bone was such a serious problem, why have carnivores the world
over survived? They should have all choked, and the family should have gone
extinct. I don't buy it, never have, and never will. These animals evolved
eating bone, and although many people have their own horror story about some
pet having a turkey bone sticking out of their neck, with blood and guts and
twisted tendons and everything, that kind of thing is more rare than
friendly cop on prom night.
Bone is a food. You might see it as a hard dead thing, but in fact it is
full of wonderful things; proteins, essential fatty acids, iron, and
vitamins to name a few. If it wasn't for eating bone, I seriously doubt if
humans would have evolved from big hairy apes running around bumping into
each other (I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking of football or basketball players,
he he he). Not only do all carnivores eat bone, but so do most humans, most
rodents, and many herbivores (I actually saw a mule deer chew on a dead
deer's exposed ribs) It is a general vertebrate trait. Bone is simply too
good a source of minerals, fats, proteins and vitamins to pass by. I feed
my sick ferrets bone marrow; they love it, and it has everything the sick
ferret needs. (You can buy beef bone at the grocers; just break the bone or
scoop out the exposed marrow. If too rich for the ferret, mix with
babyfood. Will put weight on a ferret in a hurry, and is fantansic for
anemic ferrets, especially if taken from the crunchy ends)
As for the eating of bone, the carnivore pattern is almost universal. The
ends, full of the stuff bodies use to make red blood cells, are eaten first
(soft bone--crushes into fragments, rarely splinters). What is left is a
tube filled with yellow, fatty marrow; packed with essential fatty acids and
fat soluble vitamins. The tube is chipped (gnawed) away to expose the
marrow. Normally, most of the larger bone chips are licked clean; only the
smaller ones are swallowed, without harm.
The history of ferrets proves the case; it was universal, until the last 20
years or so, to feed ferrets carcasses (or portions) intact with bone.
Which was readily consumed by the ferts. This still takes place in many
parts of ferretdom, especially in Europe. Yet, choking on bone just isn't
enough of a problem to mention.
I admit big dumb domestic dogs sometimes have a problem with smaller chicken
bones, especially those behemoths that bolt their food, but ferrets are
domesticated polecats, and friends and neighbors, they've been eating that
kind of food for eons. I'm sure someone can tell a horrible story about a
poor little ferret that died horribly from horribly choking to death on a
horrible bone. Yeah? So what. Usually those stories are just like the
ones you read in the Star; they all happened somewhere else, and no one
actually saw the body. I don't mean to offend anyone, especially someone
who might have accually lost a ferret to a chicken bone, but use a little
common sense. No one suggests computers should be turned off because fat
butts lead to heart disease, or planes should be grounded because they
sometimes crash, or the military should be fired because wars kill millions.
Should we stop driving because 50,000 americans are killed each year on our
highways? Risk is part of life, and eating bone is a LOW RISK EVENT to a
ferret, especially compared to dish washers, careless feet, rubber feet off
telephones, closing doors, washing machines, recliners, cardboard tubes,
hard rubber gadgets, rubber bands, "ghost turds", and even furnace vents.
Of all the accidental ferret deaths/near deaths reported on the FML, how
many were by a bone? Think about it. I've been feeding bone to my ferrets
from the onset, all 18 love them, and *NEVER* have I had a problem. Never!
(I'be actually fed bone to all my pets, including behemoth dogs, and only
once had a problem with Ugly Mutt, a mongrel shepard, who bolted an entire
turkey wing. Dad and I had to tie him down, block open his mouth, and pull
it out with plumber's pliers...no, I'm lying. He just coughed it up, along
with everything else he had ate for the last month or so. But he lived to
eat bone again)
I suggest all bone should be fresh and cooked; not that it softens it much,
but because cooking kills the germs that can make the bone turn rancid. It
you are worried about poutry bone splintering, boil the bone; it softens it,
and the bone water is a nice drink for the fert. Or just crush it. Leave
the tendons and cartilage on the bone; they are almost pure collagen--good
for hair and nails. Dispose of old bone daily, or when and if you can find
it (I once found a stash of turkey diaphyses--the long tubes left after the
ends have been removed, in this case by the ferrets chewing them off--in a
desk drawer. Gus, bless his soul, stashed them there. I'm too softheaded
to throw them away)
Now, if you want to flame me, go ahead. If you want to trade horror
stories, you are welcome. But facts are facts; eating sanitized fresh or
cooked bones does not hurt ferrets. Oh yeah, now that the holidays are
approaching, if you want to know how to make a bone whistle or flute from
the wing bones of a turkey, e-mail me.
Mo' Bob and the 18 Devils (and 1 Angel)
[Posted in FML issue 1717]
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