The Rainbow Bridge that leads to ferret Valhalla, the home of the good/bad/in-between and saintly ferrets, seems to be getting an awful lot of traffic these days as well as in the past. Ferret survivability, longevity if you will, is without a doubt less than the longevity of all other animal pets, bar none. More ferrets go to room temperature per unit time than any other pet you can name. Is this not true, or do you, for a fact, know? Can you cite annual death statistics for other animals, pets or otherwise? Can anyone on this FML tell me how many ferrets die in any given year? Given a number, is this number related to obvious influences that are harmful or overly beneficial? Is there a time span within a given year that the rate of dying is pronounced, or is the rate more or less constant over a span of 365 days, every 365 days? Various diseases of pet ferrets, and there are not all that many, seem to lead most invariably to lingering suffering and finally merciful death. There are few ferrets that survive qualified veterinarian treatment and seem never to return to the robust health vigor of their youth. Why is this essentially a case study in futility? What is it that we are doing or not doing that is contributing to such morbidity? We look first to ourselves as unwitted contributers to ferret mortality. What is it that we are doing, if anything, to impress upon our little mustelids, the horrors of disease and death? Do we really know what harm or good we are doing the ferret? I'd venture to say that we really don't know diddling squat. And then look to the ferret itself. What do we have in this animal? We have the tortured remains of a biological test vehicle that is bred, no not bred, but more like manufactured, to be a de-sexed, living mass of guts, skin and fur. This creature is to be used for the benefit of man, the benefit of making money on a throw-away animal that is to be killed (if it survives) at the conclusion of its usefulness for drug testing, for cosmetic research, for practicing the insertion of tracheal (breathing) tubes down its tiny throat by student nurses, by surviving or not the injection of any number of toxic fluids into its body, and who knows all the other tortures it suffers at the hands of "humanitarian" man, mostly in absolute secrecy from the public and financed with our tax dollars at universities and drug companies and private research. The manufacturing of ferret test vehicles is done on an assembly line. When the orders are filled, the manufacturing continues unabated. Why? More money is to be made by providing these de-sexed living masses of guts, skin and fur, called pet ferrets, to pet stores throughout the country. Look at your ferret's right ear, the part of the ear that protrudes above its skull, called the pinna, and on the backside of the pinna you may find down in the hairline junction of the pinna and the ferret's skin two tiny blue tattoo dots. These two blue dots are seen by some of us as the Augen des Totenkopfen or the eyes of the Nazi Deathshead. The implication here is that ferrets wearing die Augen des Totenkopfen are doomed to an early death or a developmental malady that leads most certainly to an early death. By very crude comparison consider what your health and longevity might be were you, say at age one year, to undergo anesthetic-less surgery to remove you entire reproductive system and a part of the sidewalls of your large intestine just upstream of your anus. And you experience this surgery done hurriedly on an assembly line by mal-trained amateur cutters and slicers. Now this don't sound too good, ja? Imagine if you will the negative impact such early diminution of basic hormones and genital factors portends for your future health and development. Would your growth be stunted? Would your vitality and assertiveness by dampened? Would you be more than you otherwise would be had you not been denied the growth factors and genital hormones of an untouched one year old baby? The answers: Yes, Yes, and Yes. So I say unto you to look to your own ferret. Do you have a way of comparing to an untouched ferret your ferrets stunting, your ferrets lack of vitality and assertiveness. Would you very much like to have known your ferret's condition and health were he not fixed? If you say it matters not, then go on your happy way and don't look back. For me, however, this is a path preferred not taken for the few reasons cited above. Can anybody tell me of a listing similar to the FML that speaks only to the health of ferrets. Is this the so-called Ferret Health List (FHL)? What's in a name? From what I know of the Ferret Health List, and I profess not much, I am intrigued by the name, because the FHL deals with sick ferrets, not really the healthy ferrets. Should the name be changed to the Ferret Sick List? Also, I may have missed it and somebody can tell me if true, that no ferret treated as specified on the Ferret Sick List has died...that all such ferrets have recovered to vibrant healthy lives. Me thinks that is untrue. Now for the more important question: What other animals, besides ferrets, are covered by a Health List? Or as I prefer to call it, a Sick List. If anybody knows of such a list for other pet animals, please let me know, because I have never found an animal Health/Sick List except for the ferret. Doesn't this tell you something? If it tells me anything it's that ferrets are inherently sickly by comparison to other pet mammals. I ask for your counter argument. We provide housing/shelter, we hopefully satisfy all the nutritional needs, we maintain cleanliness, and we interact with them, seemingly to both their heart's content and ours. We try to do what we can to keep them happy and vibrant. All this works...for a time that is far too short or so it seems. Within every posting of the FML there is always death, suffering, or sad commentary about somebody's ferret and the reference to the Rainbow Bridge being crossed or about to be. We even read of so-called greeters over on the other side and the lamented throes of sadness professed by the unhappy owners of sick and/or dying ferrets. Few seem to delight in their ferret making it to the eternal beauty and peace on the other side of the bridge at Valhalla. Perhaps most of us are entirely ignorant of the beauty of the Valhallian legend of the Norsemen and the inspiring melodies of Richard Wagner's music and drama as portrayed in the opera, Das Rheingold, to wit: Now gleaming in the light of the setting sun, Valhalla is visible, and like a bridge across the valley there rests a glowing rainbow and a theme of great magnificence is heard. That sounds kinda nice, yes? Edward Lipinski, Ferrets North West Foundation. [Posted in FML 6084]