Sorry. Apparently I didn't word the ancient history well. Hjalmar had already had surgery, which took one adrenal, but the other adrenal was atrophied from the Lysodren, so he went into Addisons which happens when there are not enough adrenal products to sustain life. The Florinef saved his life. When a ferret is not a surgical candidate there are approaches which are being tried. The best known and usually best acting is Lupron, but you'll find others if you pull up the Ferret Health List http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth and its archives http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/ since the specific questions arising are about non-surgical approaches for compromised individuals. Quick reminder: the idea of feeding dead baby mice or chicks to ferrets is based on hypotheses, so it may pan out or it may not in terms of health. For instance, in one of many discussions on this topic there didn't seem to be differences in longevity between kibble diets and whole animal diets, BUT the samples are too small to know anything definitely. We use kibble ourselves, but others won't and it's just not something that has enough data behind it in either case to get upset about in terms of ferret health issues. The big thing is just to remember that until final data is in even a hypothesis that looks like it might have good foundation could still fail on study, so when folks go with their choices they need to just remember to not treat something unproven as if it had been. Poofs: not much to them -- just a bit skunky but it is mild and dissipates rapidly. Onced Steve fogot to put away his roller skiis and he stepped on one. At that point we lived in a place with wooden floors and off he went, arms flailing trying to balance, headed straight for Tandy. Did she run? Did she scream? Nope, she turned around and poofed! Steve had to fall to not hit her. [Posted in FML issue 3937]