Carla, that is interesting that on a high quality dry food blend you have not had any ferrets have insulinoma over the years. Also, interesting that your vet would normally expect about a 33% rate for the illness. If I am not missing anyone in doing our current numbers I figure we've had about a 17% rate of insulinoma here (same rate as we've had for lymphomas and for cardiomyopathy types, whereas all adrenal types of growths combined have reached 29% with our current numbers). We are also on high quality food blends as you are. Our current vet says that he has noticed that when households have high numbers of insulinoma or have early ones there seems to possibly be a correlation with regular treats of sugary starch things like Cherrios or Fruit Loops. We don't give those. We do give dried fruit, though. Do you? Boy, talk about someone taking cheap shots at good people and a good shelter. I have to wonder if any of this is related to KISTA (being a state inspected and state approved shelter which is also respected by humane groups in our state) being used to help save a large number of ferrets that had been taken from a severely abusive situation. The state and the humane groups knew that they could count on these people and KISTA so were happy to have their help. Did someone confuse them with the awful place from which those ferrets were rescued? I have a feeling that might have happened. It's a real shame to blast the RESCUERS instead of the jerks. >Someone called there, and told the receptionist, and my boss, that they >were calling.. Thankfully, my employer knows me better That is HORRIBLE! How could anyone ever do such an awful thing to another? Bill, is it possible to not use posts or webpages from places like that freedom one which allow anonymous slander? Perhaps to have some sort of automatic alert which sifts them out or even just refuses them? Seems like we've had more than our fill of anonymous slanderers recently here. I always wind up wondering how much of that is from people who like to cause problems for the list in general, or perhaps do that in addition to hurting good people. Some may just be folks who NEED an audience as an astute friend here :-) pointed out to me. You know: the sorts of very rare people who like to hurt ferrets and ferret folks, or just plain like to hurt anyone for attention or other reasons. Those have existed from the start. For a while I remember people would jokingly call them secret agents of the CA F&G to disarm them some. It really helped then that people would make a point of turning their backs on those who so badly insulted others; perhaps it would be good to have that obviously happen again. After all, we all suffer because a few create such nastiness about other list members. There are very few people who act that way here, fortunately. Certainly fewer than used to be in my home town when I was a kid, and that had 2,000 people as opposed to the over 3,000 here. Bill, I'll bet that was what I was recalling. Thanks for the help! Chris probably thanked you and it stuck in my head but got generalized. Been a while, hasn't it? Called about the radio show John Boy and Billy about their bad ferret depiction and got a sweet person who likes ferrets at that number. The number turns out to be the sales office of an affiliated station. She's going to let the main office know about the call. Meanwhile, she said that in her records the number for the show itself is 1-800-Big Show. Haven't tried it, yet. [Moderator's note: With the exception of people I know with anti-spam addresses and anonymous posters who go through me, all posts have to have an address that can be replied to. In other words, at least *I* have to know how to get in touch with the poster. Posts from non-subscribers are automatically verified - if the email address bounces the post doesn't make it to the FML. BIG] [Posted in FML issue 3056]