Hamlet's Story Hamlet was not the name he was first given, but it is the name by which I choose to remember him. It is not very often that my daughter calls me at work about a ferret. This time, though, my then 17 year old felt it important enough that she call me, just catching me as I was wrapping things up for the day and getting ready to go home. "Dad, a man just called. He wants you to come and pick up his son's ferret right away. He say's it's outside and it's going to stay there until you get it." Then she gave me the phone number. The exchange was in a city to the north of my home, hardly on the way home, but it was an unusually hot, sunny, August day for New England. Temperatures were well into the high-90's most of the day. Hardly a day for a ferret to be outside. I called the number. The man that answered informed me that the ferret was his son's girlfriend's, that they were moving in with him, and there was no way he would allow that "animal" in his house. I told him that I was on my way, but to please make sure the ferret had water and was in the shade. The drive was about an hour. The heat in my un-airconditioned car was almost unbearable, even with both windows down and the car moving along at a good clip. I was quite concerned about the ferret out in that heat. The directions were good and the house was easy to find, especially with a wire cage sitting in the middle of the driveway. The ferret was lying inside, panting. No protection from the heat. No water. The man was standing nearby, watering his lawn, totally oblivious to the ferret's plight. I quickly moved the ferret onto the shaded lawn, then introduced myself. That had to be one of the fastest surrenders I've ever took. I didn't dare stay to talk for fear of my anger taking over. I did find out that the ferret's name was Rascal; he was "about a year old"; and "Oh yeah, he has a collar on his neck that we couldn't get off." We got to my home/shelter in less than a half hour. The worst heat of the day was past. I gave him a bowl of water. After he drank his fill, I checked him for dehydration by scruffing him and I noted with relief that the skin quickly snapped back to normal. Then I turned him loose on our screened-in porch to play. Rascal walked a few steps then seemed to shudder and flatten out on the floor. After a little while he repeated the movement. Something was wrong. I picked him up and started to turn him over to check his legs, when something sharp, up around his neck, pricked my hand. At first I couldn't see anything there, but as I separated his thick brown fur I noticed something sharp and pointed sticking out of his neck, just under his right ear. It looked like a piece of white plastic. Then I noticed something hard on the other side of his neck, right behind his ear. It looked like part of a plastic flea collar - the kind shaped like a ladder with rectangular holes along its length. I carefully felt along the front of his neck. The collar was deeply imbedded in the neck; well under the skin; completely covered by it except for the two ends where it had been cut off. The skin there was oozing and raw. No wonder he was having difficulty walking. Every movement of his neck must have been causing the remnants of the collar to cut further into the tissue. It appeared that the former owner had put a flea collar on Rascal when he was quite young and small, then simply "forgot" about it as Rascal grew. I can't imagine the torture he must have gone through as the forgotten collar grew tighter and tighter, slowly strangling him; finally growing so tight that it literally cut through his skin and into the tissue underneath. Then finally Rascal's skin grew over the raw open wound. I called our vet clinic (one which we no longer use) to try to get emergency surgery. They agreed to see us immediately. Once there, our new vet declared that it was "not an emergency" and that we should come back the next day during their regular office hours and that they would take care of it then. (As I said, we no longer go there in spite of it being nearby.) Joan, the other half of the shelter staff and my wife, took Rascal in for surgery first thing the next morning. When we went to pick him up that afternoon the vet told us that she had never seen anything quite like it. The tissue had grown up through and around each of the holes in the collar. She had to carefully cut loose each small segment, ending up with an incision that went from ear to ear. It was a long process, but Rascal came through it well. He looked horrible. His neck was shaved nearly all the way around and a good two inches wide. The incision was red and stitched and stitched and stitched. Although we brought a carrier, I choose to carry him in my arms and hold him all the way home. He was very quiet; hardly moving for the entire 15 minute ride. Joan and I talked most of the way home. I said that Rascal was likely in such constant pain that he probably had never been able to play or even walk properly since he was about 2 or 3 months old. I told her that my hope was that someday, once he was healed, I could see him do a ferret dance - flipping and twisting and hopping for joy. Once home, I carried him into the house and set him down on the screened-in porch. Rascal took a few tentative steps. Then a few more. Then he did something that still brings tears to my eyes just remembering it. He did a real ferret dance! Not just a little dance. He flipped and twisted and hopped and jumped like he was trying to make up for a lifetime of ferret dances that he never was able to perform. Then he went over to his food and water bowls; drank; ate his fill; then went peacefully to sleep. We changed his name to Hamlet. He was a "new" ferret and we wanted nothing to associate him with his former life. Every day he fulfilled my wish to see him ferret dance. Every dance brightened my day. Hamlet was shortly afterwards adopted by a terrific couple who had personally rescued another ferret from an abusive situation. That was a little over a year ago. His new parents report that to this day, Hamlet is the dancingist, happiest ferret that they've ever seen, and that everyone who watches him and knows his story can't help but feel some of that joy themselves. Dick B. Support your local ferret shelters [Posted in FML issue 1567]