Hello all,
 
Are you sick of me yet?  Hope not.
 
Wednesday evening there was a message from animal control in a city about 50
miles away.  At 10:30pm they're closed so I had to wait until this morning
to call them.  I spoke to a very nice supervisor there.  They'd rescued a
ferret someone had left at an apartment.  They had held him for 3 days (by
law they have to) before calling me.  Apparently they thought he had been
severely injured by some cats since his ears were bleeding and one was
mangled and there were other scratches on him.
 
A shelter representative, Michael, (who lives alot closer than I do and
could get there quicker to get him to the vet even before the vet left for
lunch) picked him up for me and carted him immediately to our vet.  It turns
out he has a very bad case of "scabbies", a type of mite I believe.  This
was causing his ear trouble.  The other scratches were minor and not
significant.  He got Ivermectin for the mite problem and Michael took him
home to hold until I can get over and pick him up.  He'll get two more
treatments of Ivermectin over the next 4 weeks then he should be fine.  He's
only about a year old.  He is neutered.  Michael said he can't tell yet if
he has tatoos, as his ears are pretty yucky!  The vet said not to do
anything topically to him, that would only interfere with the med.  but he
can have a bath, so he'll get that at least.
 
One neat thing is that someone had been checking on and visiting this guy
(the ferret) daily, hoping to adopt him from animal control once the 3 days
was up.  The guy called me immediately, once he learned they had released
the ferret to me, to see how he is doing.  He was very concerned for the
ferret.  I may see about eventually adopting this ferret to him, since he
cared enough to drive 10 to 15 miles daily to visit the poor little ferret
while he resided at animal control, and didn't have a friend in the world.
(Of course, he'll go through the same strict screening process I make
everyone go through.) It was just very comforting to me to know that this
guy was "there" for the ferret, and even if the ferret hadn't come to me,
he'd have found a home.  The man said as soon as they released the ferret to
him, he had planned to take him to the vet to get him taken care of.  That's
just neat!  Things like that, sadly, don't happen in most cases.
 
I'll keep you all posted on his progress, as time allows.
 
Kisses to all the fuzzies!  Tell them the story of this poor abandoned
little guy and let them all know how lucky they are to have good homes.
Unfortuantely, many little fuzzies do not.
 
Trish
Director, Ferrets First Rescue & Shelter
[Posted in FML issue 1905]