Oh, yes Dear Ferret Folks-
 
Our Fuzzies can be deadly effective little hunters, as Kim's post
illustrated.  Several years age, while I was napping, I was awakened
abruptly by the most horrid noises you can possibly imagine.  Piercing
shrieks, scrabbling and scratching sounds, thumps, the sound of things
being overturned.  My Ferret Mommy Radar instinctively knew that weasels
were involved.  I ran through the house to the sound of a battle being
waged.."Oh god, oh, god let them be O.K.!)
 
I found Sabrina engaged in mortal combat with...something.  She was
rolling on the floor with something small, dark, fuzzy, and wounded in
her mouth.  "A mouse!", I thought.  A mouse that was shrieking, bleeding
and ...flapping?  Flapping as in wings?  That weren't no oooordinary
mousie, oh no, it was much worse than that.  It had a little gargoyle
face, tiny fangs, and membranous wings.  It was a BAT.  A small brown BAT.
One I was going to have to remove from Sabrina's face with my BARE HANDS.
 
Rabies.  The Black Death of Europe.  Thoughts of contagion and vile,
black, dripping disease flashed through my mind.  Bat cooties.  What if
it bit me?  What if Sabrina wouldn't let go and I had to wrench it from
her bloody fangs by force?  In the end that's just what happened.  Sabrina
was NOT about to part with her prize willingly.  Nope.  She evidently had
plans to mount it's dark Satanic little head on a plaque and keep the
trophy on her cage wall.  Imagine tearing sounds.
 
I telt terrible for the bat, at the same time I was afraid of it.  By
then it was pretty clear that its' carefree days of wolfing down its' own
weight in mosquitos were over.  It was no more.  It had ceased to be.
This was an ex-bat.
 
Sabrina was sooooo pissed at me.
 
Especially during the several weeks she was quarintined in her cage
after the animal control officer came.  Evidently the bat was not rabid,
although I destroyed the possibility of testing it by placing it's
tattered little body in a Zip-Loc and freezing it in anticipation of
his arrival, hence the quarrintine.  Freezing destroys the virus.
Fortunately, some months before, some paranoid impulse lead me to have my
vet vaccinate all of my mammalian pets.  I still had the metal tag and
papers.  Thus Sabrina did not suffer the fate of the late, lamented Kodo.
Nobody cut her head off, then decided she was fine.
 
Remember this, the next time you might be tempted to say "But my pets
never leave the house, I don't need to vaccinate them..."
 
I later tried to sicc Sabrina (henceforth known as Sabrina the Bat-Biter)
on the mice in my Mother's pantry to no avail.  Sabrina only hunts on her
own terms, evidently.  She has always been difficult.  She likes her mice
with wings.
 
Sincerely,
Alexandra in Massachusetts
 
Switch the Kit: "What did it taste like, Aunt Sabrina?"
Sabrina: "Chicken."
[Posted in FML issue 3669]