It's almost 6 a.m. and we just returned from an emergency trip to the vet with Mitzy. When I came home from work, shortly after 2 a.m. the older ferrets were still out. Wayne had gone to bed and left them out, which we often do. This cage is much calmer since they are all older. They don't climb much or get into much trouble anymore. Anyway, I went looking for them to put them to bed and when I found Mitzy her eye was bulging out and had dry blood all around it and it looked hard and crusty. Her little body tensed up when I picked her up . I guess she hurt big time. I woke Wayne up and asked him if anything had happened. She is a scrapper and I wondered if she had been in a fight with one of the other ones in another cage. She tends to torment them through the bars of the cage and every once in awhile, someone ends up getting bitten. Wayne said he wasn't aware of any fights and she was fine when he went to bed. I called my vet's emergency pager and she called me back within 10 minutes. We left and made the 45 min trip to the vet. Dr. Cathy put her out and tried to push the eyeball back into the socket. She was pretty sure it was too late to save the sight in the eye, but was hopeful she could save the eye. The eye was just too swollen to push back in or to get the eyelids closed over enough to suture it in place. She spent the better part of an hour trying, and finally gave up. Mitzy will undergo surgery in a couple of hours to remove the eye. We are hoping that there is no tumor behind it. Dr. Cathy said it is most likely that she banged her eye really badly on something and is pretty sure that if it was a tumor, we would have seen signs of swelling gradually and not all of a sudden like that. Dr. Cathy gave Mitzy a shot of Baytril to prevent infection and gave her a shot for pain and to keep her relaxed. She looked comfortable enough when we left her, but her eye looked awful. I cried all the way home. I wish she could tell me what happened. Moxy goes down at 4:15 p.m. for her lupron shot, and Dr. Cathy hopes if all goes well, we will be able to bring Mitzy home with us then. I hope all goes well. I know I will have a very difficult time trying to sleep. I can't get the image of her eye out of my mind. I'll sign off for now.Your prayers for my poor little girl will be gratefully accepted. Sally St. Germain and her 12 "Little Saints." Hi.....my name is Sally.....I am a ferret-a-holic!!!!! [Posted in FML issue 2993]