Specimens are being studied by a team headed by Dr. Matti Kiupel at Michigan State who is an ace with coronaviruses, and did work on the original ECE (along with Bruce Williams for some of it), on the earlier announced ECE mutant which behaves like dry FIP as part of an international investigation, and now on this possible ECE mutant. The U.S. is full of wildlife if a person just goes to the right places. Heck, here in NJ in the ridge and swamp geographical region we wind up with a very wide range of birds depending on the season from finches, to turkeys, to quail, to geese, to cormorants, to bald eagles passing through, to egrets, to crows, to cardinals, to warblers, and on and on. There are some extremely rare martins starting to reestablish. There are some otters (not enough) and mink (ditto). Of course, there are weasels. We have eastern coyotes (one of which has taken a bit of shine to my hubby and will get within 50 feet of him -- except once when she was after a goose and ran by Steve not 5' away. We have foxes (fewer grays as the red ones increase in numbers). There are weasels, there are an assortment of rodents, there are deer. There are shrews; in fact, we even get to see some on rare occasion. Raccoons and skunks are common. The list could go on. Obviously, we don't have European or Steepe polecats, but there are places in the U.S. with BFFs... Sukie (not a vet) Recommended ferret health links: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/ http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/ http://www.ferretcongress.org/ http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html [Posted in FML 6197]