Several small responses from several days past:
 
To the anonymous poster who wanted to know if a shampoo with cedar oil,
citronella, myrrh and marigold was hazardous to shampoo ferrets...I spent a
few minutes with the Merck Index looking up the various products and cedar
oil is the only ingredient worth worrying about.  The others aren't listed
as being notably hazardous.  Citronella, of course, is also an insect
repellant.  I did not do an exhaustive lit search but the shampoo is
*probably* safe to use.  If you use it on your ferrets, check that they
don't seem wheezy in the first few days after use, which might indicate
slight respiratory distress.  (Occasional sneezing or strange breathing in
their sleep may not count since we all know that ferrets sneeze now and then
and probably have vivid dreams.) Still, a shampoo applied every few months
would be no where near the exposure from rooting around in cedar shavings
where they'd have many long hours of contact every single day.  Unless an
individual ferret has a unique sensitivity, occasional use of the shampoo
should be fine.
 
Carla Smith asked about using masks for protecting her ferrets from cold and
flu spread.  The inexpensive paper masks available in hardware stores will
stop *some* virus spread but certainly not all.  Those masks do not provide
an airtight seal around the nose and mouth, and viruses are 100 to 1,000
times smaller than one of our mammalian cells--between about 20 to 300
nanometers, that is, as small as 20 billions of a meter long.  Despite that
remarkably small size, most viral infections are still the result of a
direct contact from an infected object rather than breathing out viruses
into the room air.  There was a neat study done in humans in which people
with and without colds played poker in the same room.  No one wore masks.
Some of the healthy people later came down with colds.  In another round of
the study, some of the infected people wore surgical gloves and they failed
to spread the flu to others.  (If they had to sneeze or blow their nose,
they used tissues, and put on a new pair of gloves afterwards).  So, it
wasn't transmitted by the room air but on the playing cards.  In another arm
of the study, the infected players did not wear gloves but used tissues
impregnated with iodine to kill any virus on contact and this also stopped
the spread of the cold to the healthy people.  So, direct contact with a
large innoculum of viral particles is what transmits disease in most cases.
Despite their tiny size, breathing viruses into the air is usually not
sufficient to pass a viral disease along.  In practical terms, if you are
scrupulous about washing your hands before handling your ferrets or can
trust yourself to use a tissue or turn away if you feel the need to sneeze
while you're with them (and then wash your hands afterward), then you
shouldn't need a mask.
 
To the British fellow (sorry, don't have the name handy) who was inquiring
about innoculations for bringing your ferret into the U.S., you may not need
any shots since the U.K. is rabies free...well, except for those bats with
European bat lyssavirus (a virus related to rabies) discovered in southern
England a few weeks ago.  Most countries in the world will accept pet
animals from the U.K. with just a vet's certification that the animal is in
good health.  In practical terms, you *must* have the ferret vaccinated
against canine distemper, and, in case your ferret bites someone in the
States, you should have it vaccinated against rabies just as a safeguard,
even though there's an infinitesimally small risk of rabies in ferrets.
BTW, *why* was your ferret vaccinated against Hepatitis B of all things?
I've NEVER heard of ferrets being susceptible to that unless your vet
thought your ferret was a groundhog, which can get Hep B.  (Stranger things
have happened.) That's weird.
 
--Jeff Johnston ([log in to unmask])
[Posted in FML issue 1699]