Yesterday, a learned person wrote: If one considers that the consumed herbivorous bolus can be in any stage of progressive digestive, enzymatic dissolution - depending upon its gut location in the alimentary canal - then salivary masticated fiber and beyond to the near fecal herbivorous sludge is going to be diverted through the ferret's alimentary circuit, as the ferret dines, and without the functionality of the incipient intestinum caecum (L). Do we conclude therefore that the ferret cannot benefit from consuming herbivorous digest, especially when one pulls up the ancient adage that the portal to the small intestine at the duodenum is lacking a defined, ruminant fermentation sack, the vestigial cecum? I am a nervous wreck. I look OK on the outside, but might I possibly be full of "near fecal herbivorous sludge?" I have taken a few Tums. I hope they protect me. I learned many things at my mother's knee, but never that ancient adage that "the portal to the small intestine at the duodenum is lacking a defined, ruminant fermentation sack, the vestigial cecum." Is my cecum in fact vestigial? Is that why I sometimes feel inadequate at social gatherings, and have an almost irresistible urge to hide beneath the furniture until all those people are gone? Do I even *have* a cecum? Would you like to buy mine on Ebay to help Travis L. raise cash for the Black Footed Ferrets suffering from the plague? Oh. I see he auctioned off his already for that very purpose. Then there is the issue of the "consumed herbivorous bolus" that can be in any stage of progressive, digestive, enzymatic dissolution." Isn't that what killed Elvis thirty years ago? (Aug. 16, 1977 for the preternaturally precise.) He was sitting on the throne that night thirty years ago reading (he was the King, after all, so his terlet really was as close to a throne as you can get) and he suffered an acute dissolution of his consumed herbivorous bolus, and fell face-first into the shag carpet, never to rise again? I just know I'm going to have a panic attack at the supermarket, obsessively reading the nutrition information on each package to determine the presence or absence of salivary masticated fiber. Fiber is good, right? If there is masticated fiber in your package of frozen waffles, though, are they still organic? Do you just use lo-cal syrup? If you use plain old Mrs. Butterworth's will they, like, burst into flames and inflate your carbon footprint? I am shaken by all of this, badly shaken. I am going to lie down, now. Alexandra in MA Note: I am not trying to make mean fun of the author of this post who obviously went far to try to help us out with a ferret health question, I just love the language it is written in! [Posted in FML 6069]