Maybe one of the wise and knowledgeable vets can help us out with this one :) We recently received in our rescue a large (very large), smelly (REALLY smelly) intact male sable ferret. His origins are unknown, he was dropped off at the house of woman who takes in ferrets, while she wasn't home. The previous owners didn't even see fit to offer us his name *sigh* Anyway, when he was brought to me, I noticed immediately that he had a very large lump on his left side, about an inch long and half an inch wide, right below his...errr...armpit and running down the length of his ribs. It was hard and unmoveable, so we immediately suspected a tumour. He has no hair loss, absolutely NO lethargy and handling the area didn't seem to bother him at all. We brought him into our wonderful vet, the one who handles all of our rescues, and had it x-rayed. The results of the x-ray are, well, somewhat baffling. The lump is not, in fact, a lump. (yeah uh huh, weird huh?) The x-ray revealed no tumour, no presence of bone cancer, in fact nothing out of the ordinary except that two of the ferret's ribs are about twice the size as the rest of his normal healthy ribs. They are twice as thick. There doesn't appear to be any indication that they were broken, as there is no scar tissue present. They are simply bigger. This is why the "lump" is so hard and noticeable, because it's just real big ribs. Is it possible that this is a genetic defect (one that causes really big ribs) or is it indicative of some dreadful disease that we don't know about? Frankly, our vet is baffled. He says he's never seen anything like it. He was neutered right after the x-ray (the ferret, NOT the vet) and is as happy as ever. We would really appreciate some feedback. And we would love some suggestions as to a name. We WERE calling him Tumour Guy (we have a sick sense of humour, yes) and now we've resorted to Big Ribs. If you can come up with something better...hehehe Just to add my two cents: I think the FML is wonderful, length-and- content-wise both. The little tid-bits of information people toss in is often really helpful for the rest of us, and I don't mind giggling over someone's story for a few moments to get to it. And I also must say that FMLers are the kindest people I've ever run into...all the sympathy notes we got after having Fang euthanized were very helpful as we greived. We really appreciated them. Sheena PS One of my ferrets (I dunno which) experienced a complication after his/her distemper vaccine...I found a pool of what appeared to be almost entirely blood (red liquid) on the playroom floor, about an hour after the vaccinations. The vet advised to watch all the ferrets and take "the one" in immediately if there were breathing and/or other problematic symptoms, but everyone was absolutely fine and it has happened since. I don't know if it was related to the shot but it was a little odd... Ferrets & Friends Club & Rescue E-Mail: [log in to unmask] "dedicated to the preservation of the domestic ferret as a household pet", a no-kill, not-for-profit ferret facility. [Posted in FML issue 1321]