Today was a very sad day for us. With the shelter there are a number of losses of the ferrets and I usually don't write about them but there was a special boy who we adopted for ourselves and the first one that I can say really got into my husband's heart. He came to us from our Humane Society as a second chance reject- very dehydrated and emaciated. It was in May of 2005, when the air in the southwest becomes very dry and small animals dehydrate easily. I took him home and fed him up with Bob C's chicken gravy. Gave sub-q fluids.He responded well, started eating TF dry food and filled out well within a week. But then I noticed something in his belly, which upon surgery turned out to be a pretty huge hairball. That's the first time I had taken a ferret in for stomach surgery. More gravy to the rescue. He made a wonderful recovery and we decided to keep him. He was a loner and would tear into anyone who crossed his path.Therefore he would be put into master bedroom after his morning rounds, where he would sleep in a plastic dishpan or sometimes on the carpet under the bed. Even if he was out in the rest of the house he would always find something made of plastic to sleep in, a bucket, bag, storage basket. He became Daddy's Boy, playing with Bill in afternoon when he came home from work. Then he would go back to sleep in his preferred plastic bed until Bill went to bed when Silver had to go to his cage. Recently he had developed insulinoma and he got his pred in gravy twice a day, but he must have needed more now and he was having seizures. More pred didn't help at this point, he was hospitalized and the vet called with the bad news that he was unresponsive in spite of the glucose coming up, indicating brain damage so the decision was made to help him to the Rainbow Bridge. It is the first time I have seen my usually stoic husband cry over the loss of one of our ferrets. Silverado was truly Daddy's Boy. Fly free, Silver. Enjoy the healing power of the Rainbow Bridge and let yourself learn to play with some of the many other babies there. Love from Mom and Dad Carol Owens Ferret Friends, Inc. Tucson AZ [Posted in FML 6412]