Greetings from Eden & her guys in Seattle, first a question. While the boys were at the Vet yesterday, Lemke for Insulinoma surgery & Misha for teeth cleaning, the vet took a look at the stool samples they kindly provided her ;-> and says that they have Giardia. We have some medication to take care of this (at least temporarily, Dr. Bishop says that since we take them outdoors regularly it will likely return at some point) but this is a disease that I'm totally unfamiliar with regarding ferrets. Anybody know about how Giardia manifests itself in ferrets & what the risks etc are? We were very involved with other issues at the time, so since it wasn't something Dr. Bishop was concerned about much we let it go... I tried to check the searchable archives at Ferret World but they seem to be busted... Lemke's surgery went well, though Dr Bishop had to remove his spleen in order to get to the head of the pancreas where one of the 2 insulinomas was located (the other was easy access at the tail of the pancreas) shetook a look at his liver & adrenal glands while she was there & everything else looks fine. Unfortunately he's not recovering from surgery as well as he should so Bill is at home with him now & calling the Doc to decide where we go from here... (keep the good thought) I have a couple of comments now on recent pieces of the FML. Re all the "Merry Christmas" wishes that people are signing off with right now, I do understand that they are meant as kind and freindly thoughts, but please remember that not everyone shares the same religeous beliefs, and let's keep our friendly hopes that everyone will enjoy the Holiday season non-denominational. Re Maggie Mae's "Funny Story" and Jason Poole's "Flame" (BIG if you've declared a moratorium on the topic by the time you get this, please just delete this paragraph) I wholeheartedly agree with Jason that Maggie's posting was offensive and innapropriate to this list, however Jason, preaching your morality re her "promiscuity" was totally irrelevant and just detracts from the point that her message should not have been posted. If Maggie wants to tell us all the story of her (or her friends) love life every 3 days, I don't much care, I can and do delete those messages. but to condone bestiality in even a mild way is, in my not so humble opnion, WRONG. Bestiality is animal abuse, Period. The animals don't have a choice in the matter, they don't know what's going on, but we as thier caretakers have a responsibility to make right choices and to think about how our behaviors hurt them. Like it says in "The truth about Cats & Dogs" (great movie) You can love your pets, just don't LOVE your pets... I'm done preaching now, let's get back to talking about ferrets :-> Wishing you all and all your ferrets a very joyous winter Eden and her 3 guys: Misha, Lemke & Bill (the human one) [log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 2164]