First. may I say thank you for the info on the dangers of cough meds for ferrets. Whatever it was I used years ago I learned from several people on the FML at the time, and it worked. If there were warnings about cough meds on the FML, I missed them. Thankfully, KoKo stopped coughing the next day. I had several swarms of ants I had to kill in the morning. This is not the only time over the years I have had a ferret hacking and coughing for hours...scaring the crud out of me.. and then found several hundred ants the next day. I have no idea if Koko was eating them, or if it is just a coincidence. None were in the food or water bowls. But she has stopped coughing. Cost of Surgery Miss Mini-Me apparently has dined on foam rubber and metal. Heaven knows she is my gaa-bigh guurl. She climbs on my clothes to get onto shelves in the closet. She runs up the sides of the cages. She leaps from one piece of furniture to another like a flying squirrel. She leaps on the cats face, and bites the poor thing. He screams and leaps away, and she does this leap, dance, twist of such intensity. She gets into every garbage container every day. She sneaks into the pantry when I have the door open for a second to get out a hammer, or more ferret food, or a can of something. I have locked her in at least a dozen times over the years over night, or for the day. It is here she would have eaten foam rubber. Anyway...the cost of surgery to remove the alleged foam rubber was going to be a minimum of one thousand dollars. That was Just for the surgery itself that I was told was VERY dangerous, lengthy, and difficult. Then there would be the hospital stay if she survived, the IV the pain meds, the cost of the room during surgery... I just got another opinion today, and was told pretty much the opposite by another vet. So Mini-Me is scheduled for surgery this Thursday. The cost should be about half of what the other exotic vet quoted me. The vet I saw today said the surgery should take 20 minutes, and that she had done a large number of them, and that it was straight forward to do, and that the stomach on Mini-Me was not distended, and that she had a great chance of making it. The apparent foam rubber is still there on the x-ray we took today. I have come to accept that my little one may well die because of wrong advice by a Dr. It has already happened several times. It is the closest I have come to gambling. I could let it eat me up. But that will change nothing. All I can do is to make a decision that appears to be best based upon the advice of an expert. I was not going to put her through a surgery that would probably kill her. It is just a fluke I made the appointment with this other vet weeks ago. You realize Drs. are often booked weeks ahead of time for Saturdays. So who knows what the truth is here. I sure don't. But I am gambling on the words of the second vet: that Mini-Me has a very good chance of surviving the surgery, that it is not this incredibly complex dangerous, long, risky surgery, and that she has a very good chance of mending and living on to be my mean Miss Mini-Me...my gaa-bigg guurl. Please say a quick prayer for this string bean silver mitt, trouble making, attack everyone ferret...that she make it through surgery to regain her strength and health. I am syringe feeding her, and now have her on still another antibiotic. Many thanks Lisette [Posted in FML issue 4458]