Well, I'm starting to get caught up with stuff at home, so I dove into my
ferret stuff prior to catching up at school.  Guess I know my priorities.
 
My heart is broken for all the ill and passing ferrets.  Some truely sad
situations...and for TLE who is swamped with 50+ ferrets down with ECE.  If
someone in Kansas could pear in her windon to see if she is still breathing,
I'm sure she would appreciate it.
 
Some comments of a couple of threads.  Ferrets answering the phones.  I have
a dedicated line to the Mac, and also have installed a telephone program so
I can talk-n-type.  Normally, the "BC Research Center" (AKA, a bedroom
filled with books) is off limits to the beasties because of an incident with
an early draft of the DISERTATION and DOO-DOO, (but thats another story),
except when I am in the room.  Its interesting that when I am not in the
room, thats the place to be, and they will try for hours to get in.  But if
I'm there, they just walk in, crap in the corner, then leave as if I'm
polluting the place.  One day, I briefly left (after locking the drawer
containing my soul-on-paper) for a soda.  As I as returning, I swear I heard
my brother David say my name.  Well, he lives in sunny California, so I
thought it was weird, and then I heard it again.  This time I knew it was
his voice, and it sounded like he was in the house.  so I checked the front
door.  Nothing.  I shouted for him.  Nothing.  I went all over the grounds,
the rooms, even down into the street, all the time periodically hearing his
voice.  Nothing.
 
After a while, I just figured it was a flash-back or something I ate, and
went back to the research center, only to discover the source of the
disembodied voice--my computer.  David was wondering where the hell I was
while he was on long distance rates, and why I wasn't saying anything
because he could hear someone moving around and occasionally chuckling.  It
took several minutes for me to explain that somehow Balistic and Tori had
managed to get to the key board at the sound of the tone (I replaced the
irritating ringing sound with a very pleasant ferret whining sound-ain't
macs wonderful?), press <return> to open the window, and then press <F4> to
answer the phone.  But the really great part of it is they also pressed
<F12> which recorded the incident to the hard disk--all 35.7 MB of it--so I
could laugh at David over and over again.  Each time Tori would dook, David
would accuse me of laughing at him.....
 
Another thread I want to comment on is about the beach and sand.  I can't
see how sand could be much of a problem in a burrowing animal.  The reason
ferrets have such long claws, big nose (for the size of their head), small
eyes and diminished ears is precisely because they spend so much time under
ground.  I put a potting soil-sand mixture in a kiddie wading pool for them
to dig around in, and have never so much as seen sand in their scats,
although I'm sure the occasional grain might find its way done the ferret
gullet.  When Elizabeth (she just turned 17) was a toddler, she ate three
mud pies.  At the time, I was sure she was poisoned, dispite the assurance
of my mother who rambled something about me loving to ingest cat litter.
Later, when Andrew did basically the same thing, we all chuckled to see the
consistancy of his diaper droppings.  A little sand ain't gonna hurt the
average fert.
 
As for the sunny sand and the salt water.  One consistant thing about
wildlife biologists is that when it comes time to study an animal, they tend
to go where its easy to find them.  In New Zealand, that's near the lagoons.
In in a coastal swampy area.  The only reported spot in North America where
a colony of feral ferrets used to live (They were introduced to control the
European rabbit) was the San Juan Islands off Oregon.  Notice a commonality?
I suppose if you stake your ferret out in the hot sand, things might get
bad, but I take mine to the beach all the time and have never had a bad
incident.  They swim in the tide pools, run all over the rocks, burrow in
the sand, then mess up the car on the way home.  When Bear was just a cub,
he decided to sniff out a crab, who was outraged at the intrusion into
his/her home and pinched his pink little nose.  He was running in circles
with a crab hanging on, and I was running after him laughing and trying to
"save" him, laughing so hard that I couldn't make any headway.  He finally
stopped, pulled it off with his paws, then walked away with all the dignity
he could muster, and with his fluffed up tail, wasn't much.
 
As for heat, I carry an atomizer with me, and periodically spray them down.
I also carry lots of water, and allow them to drink frequently (very
important in hot areas--I love the desert and once dehydrated myself to the
point of forming kidney stones.  I learned my lesson well after giving birth
to several stone-babies.  I now carry two ten-gallon jugs at all times.)
 
I guess the point is, while ill or weak ferrets may have a difficult time,
most ferrets will have a riot if you use just a little common sense and take
it easy.  My rule of thumb is, if a human infant can tolerate it, so can a
fert.  One other thing is, like humans, ferrets who never get out in the
weather have a hard time adapting to it.  The more exposure to hot and cold
temperatures, the better they tolerate it.  One summer I worked in Death
Valley, and we would make bets on which tourists would get sick.  (A macabe
but profitable venture) I always won, until my secret leaked out.  Those
tourists who had warm clothing and "smelled warm" (not stinky--just warm.
Hard to explain) never got sick.  Those who had cool clothes and didn't
smell warm invariably got sick.  They were the ones who ran from air
conditioned hotel to air conditioned car to air conditioned tourist
attraction, etc. etc. etc.  I want to say most of them were Germans, but
actually most came from big cities.
 
Not a flame, just observations and opinions.
 
Bob and the Traveling Fert Show
[Posted in FML issue 1525]