I don't mean to start another board war on here, but I just have to
comment on the reader that said she'd never had a rescue react to being
dumped. I don't run a shelter and so have never had to deal with that
particular situation, but I have had experience with ferrets grieving
the loss of a buddy. I can't imagine it would be much different. One
is just grieving for a human (and I secretly suspect mine just see
me as the tallest ferret in the house and the only one with opposable
thumbs).

Over my 12 years and 9 ferrets I have had a number of bonded pairs. At
the passing of one, the other has always demonstrated traits of grief.
My last bonded pair was Joe and Bear. There at the end, Joe suffered
from insulinoma and adrenal disease. Bear was perfectly healthy. They
were very tightly bonded and had been from the moment they met. Bear
was a shelter boy and joined our family at one year of age. Joe was the
same age. Even though there were many other ferrets in the household,
Joe and Bear were inseperable. Particularly, Bear needed to be with
Joe. He would actively search Joe out when they were apart. Towards
the end, Joe was really sick. We had worked through all the available
treatments and he just got sicker and sicker. I would find Bear curled
around his buddy, licking his ears, snuggling in to keep Joe warm. At
the risk of humanizing him, he seemed "worried" and "concerned". (Dang,
I can't tell this without crying.) Joe died on my chest at about 4am
three days after Christmas a year ago. His friend Ringo had died two
days before the same way at about 1am. I knew it was coming with both
of them and I think Bear knew it too. He was never quite right after
that. A month later he started exhibiting signs of insulinoma. The vet
confirmed it and we decided to do surgery as Bear was healthy and
strong and a great candidate. My vet is excellent at that surgery and
had done it on three of my kids already. Should have been nothing. Bear
quit breathing and crashed on the table. Took the vet a frantic hour
to get him back and stablized. Shocked us all. He came home though and
seemed to recover nicely from the surgery. He was fine physically, but
always was just emotionally off. He seemed sad and kind of lost without
Joe. Even though there were other ferrets in the house that he had
played with before, Bear quit playing. He just wandered around. He lost
the spark that was him. Two months after Joe died, I came home to find
Bear dead. He had curled up in a paper sack of yarn and it looked like
he just went to sleep. I have always felt like he just gave up. He
wanted Joe. I buried him next to Joe under a crepe myrtle.

I know scientists say that animals have no emotions and that we humans
are only anthropomorphizing them. I have to disagree. The daily
evidence I am confronted with from my menagerie of dogs, cats and
ferrets leads me to believe otherwise. I believe my dogs and cat and
the ferrets experience a myriad of emotions. You just have to watch the
unbridled dance of joy from an ecstatic ferret or the pitiful speed
bump of despair from a sad weasel to believe it is so. It just makes
sense to me that these emotions and emotional bonding can cross from
ferret to human.

[Posted in FML 5508]