Bev had the message on her machine, but she was out of town, so she asked me
to pick the ferret up.  Apparently, the landlord had found the ferret,
without food and water, abandoned by his departing tenants.  He took the
ferret home, put it on the back porch, gave him food and water, but he was
not eating and seemed to be going downhill fast.  I don't know how long the
ferret had been left in the apartment, or how long the landlord had him.
 
As soon as I picked him up, I knew he was dying.  His sable body was cold to
the touch and he was pitifully thin.  He whimpered briefly as if in pain.
The landlord had a syringe and told me there was a nearby drug store where I
could get pedialyte.  He thought perhaps if I could get some fluids in him,
the little guy might be ok.
 
I gave the ferret a couple cc's of water from the syringe.  He struggled a
bit at first, then swallowed a few times.  The evening air was getting cool,
so I snuggled him against my body.
 
The man said something about putting him back in the cage and putting it (a
somewhat rusted 2-story wire cage) in the car.  I said no, I had a carrier I
would put the ferret in.  We can just dump the litterbox and stuff and put
the cage sideways in the back seat.
 
I headed to my car to put the ferret in the carrier, and thought maybe I
could get him to take a little more water.  It was then I realized he was
dead.  I had been holding him for less than a minute.
 
I didn't cry until I got home and told my daughter he was dead.  We washed
his body, trimmed his very long nails and wrapped him in a clean soft
tshirt.  We named him Sydney after Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities,
and buried him under the little redbud tree in the backyard.
 
"It is a far better resting place I go to than I have ever known."
 
Linda Iroff
North Coast Ferret Shelter
http://www.oberlin.edu/~liroff/ncfs.html
[Posted in FML issue 2053]