Here goes my ferret story.
 
I've never seriously thought about owning ferrets until my girlfriend
brought her sister's ferrets to our apartment.  One was a female, black
sable while the other was a male, brown sable (I'm not too good on this
color issue).  The female was named Nikki and the male named Bear because it
looked just like a bear.
 
Then one day, tragedy struck.  My girlfriend was going to school and had a
headache so she put two tylenol into her jeans.  Well, she never took them,
so when she came home she changed into different clothes and left the jeans
with the tylenol in the clothes hamper.  Bear, who ate almost anything and
was quite the curious one, went into the clothes hamper and found the
tylenol.  My girlfriend noticed a half eaten tylenol after hearing Bear
throw up.  We called the vet and they told us to bring it right in.  We did,
and they tried everything, but unfortunately he did not pull through.  He
became hypersensitive and we put him to sleep.
 
We didn't want Nikki to feel alone, so three days after putting Bear to
sleep, we went and bought another brown, male sable that looked similar to
bear.  We didn't want to do that (we actually wanted another female), but
this ferret both caught our attention.  We named it Chester.  Now Chester is
really big (At 3 mo.  of age, he is 2 lbs.  5 oz.) and he is kind of rough
(oh ya, Nikki is 2 yrs.  old and Bear was 1 yr old) so we wanted to get
another kit for Chester to play with since Nikki is a very slender ferret.
 
So, we got what we think to be a silver-mitt.  I'm not sure, but here is his
features.  Burgandy eyes (not red unless you look at him when he is staring
at the light).  A complete white head all the way down to his shoulders
where it then gets very dark (only across his shoulders).  The rest of his
body has got both black (mostly) and white guard haris.  His legs are dark,
and he has a white tip at his tail.  His mitts are white (well his back two
are completely white while his front two are spotted) and his underbelly is
white with brown/black spots.  He also has dark haris around the backside of
his ears.  I think it's a silver-mitt with panda markings?  Can this be the
case?
 
So now Bailey (the silver-mitt) and Chester roughhouse all the time now
while Nikki mainly sleeps.  I mean she gets up, runs around for maybe 5
mins.  and then goes back to sleep.  Then we noticed that she seemed to be
getting thinner (even though she was already really skinny to begin with).
So, we took her to the vet (Dr. Kemmerer (sp?)) and they ran all these tests
on her.  They couldn't find anything so they gave us Amoxicillin and one
other antibiotic.  They suggested we do an x-ray, but at $85, we cannot
afford to do that.  She weighed 1 lb.  13 oz at the beginning of December,
and she now weighs 1 lb.  4 oz.  So it appears to be something wrong with
her right?  I just know that my girlfriend could not stand to lose another
ferret so close to the first one dying.
 
Thanks for listening to my rambles.
 
Josh Johnson
Transplanted Alaskan
Poor Student
Always a Gator
University of Florida: 1996 National Champions
[Posted in FML issue 1813]