Hey, do couch potatoes have fun?  How about when they are not pursuing team
sports, or trying to beat their own athletic best?  Well, guess what:
ferrets can be the same way when they are recovering, sick, or elderly.
Like humans their ability to have fun with or without physical endeavors is
a matter of personal taste.  Years ago, Haleakala in her dotage was even
better at it than old Meltdown is.  Using her good eye she'd sit and happily
gaze at an aquarium for hours (and demand to go back if disturbed).  For
others there is favorite music (or a favorite radio personality) -- just as
mezmerizing.  Hjalmar could watch me for incredible lengths.  Meltie can
ride in my shirt peacefully studying the world.  This is NOT an indication
that the ferret has given up (as some have worried).  When they give up it's
obvious -- refusal without fighting to eat, flat and sad eyes, etc.  Some of
them LIKE learning gentle pleasures -- when elderly MOST enjoy their leisure
and slaves.  (Even young ones often don't mind relaxing during a recovery --
but most recoveries are NOT of young ferrets because most are incredibly
trouble free while younger -- just as human kids will enjoy a few days of
watching tv and being brought dry toast and tea when sick rather than
bouncing off walls in their usual human child play mode.
 
Are they tough?  You have already heard from folks letting you know how FAST
their ferrets recovered from major abdominal surgery (which for mid-life
humans tends to knock the stuffing out of you for 6 weeks wiht total
recovery longer) so let's think of Meltie as if she were a person.  She'd be
in her early to mid eighties, with a type of heart condition which people
get, too, and after an astoundingly long time almost symptom free and
athletic despite it well into her seventies she is going through a hard
time.  How many healthy humans go into that age bracket so athletic?  How
many could survive four (4!) near death experiences and still come out at a
more than reasonable clip, enjoying life and being downright POSSESSIVE of
their carnations and their treats!  Meltdown has a number of joys in life -
they are just different ones than when she was young.  Personally, I'd like
to be able to still heft iron and do pushups when I'm in my 70s and 80s, but
I might not.  A good book and a copy of Science News, on the other hand will
always absorb me and thrill me.
 
Is the maybe 15% rate of illness/surgery/handicaps/old age problems unusual?
What kind of rate do you think you'd see among other animal species living
with humans here, or among humans themselves (even though most folks here
seem young)?  What rates do you think the other lists find among the
critters there?  Ferrets just compress it into a shorter time; THEY ALSO PUT
MORE JOY INTO A MINUTE THAN ANYONE!
 
Did you know that only 10 years ago it was near impossible to find a vet who
even knew how to gas a ferret safely, and until 9 years ago no one tried to
do chemo for a ferret with cancer.  Only five and a half years ago was there
a ferret chemo survivor of biopsy proven lympho.  MANY other things have
been figured out since then, and honestly (from vets) the FML revelations
often FIRST reach vets and the public and have led to such RAPID PROGRESS in
care,expectations, knowledge that it is like getting from where human meds
were -- what, 60 or 70 years ago -- in a handful of years.  Now, we need to
bring vets who are without a reasonable data base into modern ferret
medicine by passing the FML and the FAQs along, saving AS MANY ferrets as if
all could adopt the rescues we'd like to.  Educating new owners with info on
the common health problems might save even more because they will demand
that vets not familiar with ferrets start keeping up.
[Posted in FML issue 1825]