Habanero: What? Your ferret is eating spicy natives of Havana? Bad ferret! Spit that person out! (Sorry. Couldn't resist, so hope the FML folks will forgive me.) Seriously, with hot peppers do remember that there is the risk of tissue irritation for eyes, nose, etc. Rozareo, on her left side, just under the ribs and it is soft tissue rather than hard? That would be the bottom portion of her spleen. Good for you, haivng asked your vet first so that you can be safe! That's the right thing to do. After all, abnormal lumps can happen where normal lumps are, too. One other not-uncommon thing that folks sometimes feel in the abdomen when they check is feces as it moves along in the intestines. >I keep reading about adrenal glands and operations for them, but I have >no idea what on earth they are. What are adrenal glands, and is there a >reason Binky should have his removed? If he's healthy then leave them in there! :-) First you can find multiple sites that list ferret vets in: http://www.ferretcongress.org/ by clicking on "Critical Ferret References" to your left. Adrenal glands produce some essential hormonal products. That is why ferrets who have had both removed in full (or have had one out but the other one is suppressed or atrophied -- an unusual problem which can occur) have to be on Florinef and Pred, or Percorten and Pred or the ferret will go into terminal Addison's Crisis. (Sometimes a substitute for Pred is used but that is not usual.) The Florinef or Percorten allows the regulation of some electrolytes and the Pred allows the regulation of fluids. These are essential functions for survival. When adrenal glands become diseased in ferrets it is virtually always (note the qualifier) a hyperestrogenic form of illness which involves symptoms like fur loss, vulvar swelling, skin sores, pear shape or other unusual fat deposition for healthy ferrets who are not very old and are kept a normal weight, prostate enlargement (and sometimes prostatic cysts) which will often be very dangerous because of inability to urinate, anemia that can be life threatening, UTIs, vaginal infections, etc. Obviously, even though the cause is usually (but not always) a benign one, diseased adrenal glands need to come out and the tissues removed should be biopsied by a ferret-knowledgeable veterinary pathologist (which is always the smart thing to do when tissue is removed in surgery, any way). You can also learn more in the discussions and files at http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth and the archives at http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/ (which can also be reached by clicking on the "Complete Archive" bold print on the FHL home page). LOL! Good common sense, post, Betty (though we try for less fat than that description if I read it right during the warm months and year round *when possible*, it sounds like you are still not talking fat-fat). Like you, we put a lot of faith in exercise for them as one of the big components for good health. Yes, they sure do vary a lot! >Over the last five years of working with the Alberta Ferret Society I've >spoken with many people who also had ferrets "way back when" and who >also fed what today we would consider totally "inappropriate" diets >(cheap cat food/table scraps etc). The one thing I found in common with >all of them was that they each claim that their ferrets lived to be >between 9-12 years. Same here. I don't personally suspect that it was the food, though no one knows for sure, I gather, so perhaps something was right there which has been missed since -- I don't know. What seemed more closely aligned in my observations (note the qualifiers) was that a number of fancy-coat fur fitch wound up in the pet stock breeding pools and those fancies were preferentially bred so that their genes wound up in a lot of the population. One reason that I think this is a serious component is because folks have been sending me death ages for blaze and panda ferrets for some time now years -- (Note that this is not a well designed sampling method so could easily be off), and while there are some of those who make it into normal old ages or 7 or 8 years old there appears to be a huge number who just don't make it to normal old age, let alone old-old. I think that an "appearance first" mentality has damaged the viability of the pet stock in North America and that we all need to be asking breeders for health and longevity records when acquiring ferrets privately and simply walking out if those aren't supplied, and going preferentially to private breeders with such records when we aren't rescuing. [Posted in FML issue 3954]