There have recently been complaints about folks not getting replies. Let's look at the situation at hand. Perhaps what was asked about is rare enough that whatever you learn is something you will wind up teaching us, rather than visa versa. Maybe your's is at the tail-end of a string of info requests someone received and some of the other folks are not people who take their pets to vets so the person replying is discouraged, or maybe there are some extremely serious possibilities attached to the suite of problems you describe so the person is very scared for your ferret and doesn't want you to be suddenly bereaved. People here are mostly wonderful and usually try to answer when they have something which may help; I personally have had times when questions I've answered had to wait 3 to 5 days for any reply because the problem was so difficult that one or two people who figured they may have leads had to track those down for Steve and me. This sort of kindness went a long way toward giving our ferrets more quality time and longer lives, and we will always appreciate that they took the time to aid us. Not all answers are easy, and not all descriptions have enough information for folks to be able to help. None of us knows which of the folks here (outside of our own smaller friendship groups) have a parent at home who has just had a stroke, or three kids with the flu, or cancer, or about 40 more hours of volunteer-work this week to help other people's ferrets besides our own, or 60 hours of shelter work to do, or layoffs going on at job-work, or any wide range of things which might make any of us unable to help at any time. Cut a bit of slack; that consideration will be repaid over the years, believe me. Sukie [Posted in FML issue 2187]