This is a spot of news about the Ferret And Dove Sanctuary, Inc. in Pensacola, Florida. Good news-y items are several; we're getting one of them-ther low rate small business loans to get the house reapirs done of the damages from Hurricane Ivan, got several folks who have offered to help with the fram-bent, smashed window when that SBA loan comes through, and a local Courier Service has donated one of their second-hand cars to us (that needs only minor repairs, of which we're friends with a mechanic who can do said repairs for a song) so that we now have an always-available emergency vehicle to run critters to the vets or animal emergency clinic, etc. at need. The not-so-good is that several of the elderly ferrets have all come down with insulinoma symptoms ( like pancreas cancer, plunges victim into extreme low blood-sugar if not regularly fed to cover this, usually ferrets start with an every-3-to-4 hour requirement)at the same time, and now my feeder-list and pedia-pred giving-list has grown to five teensy souls. (And we supplementary-feed many more among the 50 ferrets currently in Sanctuary) Just the beginnings of low-blood-sugar shock is enough for us and our regular vet to treat any given ferret over 8 years of age for insulinoma and three of the "new" insulinoma-ferrets are nine years old, and Jazzmine Miss-Boss, our eldest as well, is going to be 13 years young this January. The just plain weird is a pair of spayed and neutered rabbits we've also been minding. They're fine, we're still on the lookout for homes for them, because besides being already spayed and neutered and best-friends, they're also fantastically litter-box-trained and are about as ideal of a pair of house-rabbits as anyone might ask for...except...? Well, you see, it's the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere, here. Linus, the brown lop-eared fellow, has usually been bolder, anyway than his buddie-girl, white-with-brown-spots Cassidy. Yesterday Linus the rabbit did something neither I nor Wes have ever heard any of our other rabbits do. He ran right up to Wesley's shoed feet and actually growled at him. (then hopped into the day-cage with Cassidy). We've never heard of a rabbit growling. Just plain weird. [Posted in FML issue 4691]