If you have access to a research library, check out the Dec. issue of the journal, Veterinary Medicine. It has a special section on ferret medicine. There is one article by James Morissey (and others) on methods of examining and testing ferrets. Then there are two articles by Judith Bell. One focuses on diet. I especially enjoyed this as it explained in detail why grocery store corn-based diets are innapropriate for ferrets, and also had some other interesting information. She says, "Sometimes ferrets develop a taste for unusual treats such as banana and raisins." She must be spying on me, because mine LIVE for bananas and raisins. Well, anyway, I digress. The other article was on endocrine disorders or ferrets. There's a short, but nifty explanation of ferret estrous that I enjoyed. Isn't Judith Bell the Marshall Farms doc? Or former Marshall Farms doc? Reading those articles stimulated a vet-like question: In the diet article, Dr. Bell says that cats cannot convert B-carotene to Vitamin A, but ferrets can. This reminded me that someone once told me that ferrets have no alcohol dehydrogenase, and that's why alcohol is dangerous to them. Is that true? Do ferrets have alcohol dehydrogenase? (Alcohol dehydrogenase converts ethanol to acetaldehyde--which helps give you that headache, yeah you know the one...) Oh! Really cute story. I have a nephew who is 2.5 years old. He played with my very gentle ferret, Sebastian, on Christmas. Sebastian was in fine form and danced a very good wardance for him. When the nephew left with his parents, he said his round of goodbyes (no kisses, no hugs, please :). He said "Goodbye Aunt Cafrin, Goodbye Uncle Brent, Goodbye Uncle Ca-lark..." etc. Then he paused and said, "Goodbye Uncle Sebashun." I thought that was too cute. -Catherine Sebastian "Say, 'Uncle!' Bahahaha!" Mortimer "Do you have to eat a carrot to have B-carrot-ene?" Mithril "I got alcohol dehydrogenase and plenty of it! Gimme a swig o' that!" [Posted in FML issue 1800]