Re: Ferret having difficulty breathing.... Sounds *alot* like pulmonary disease, i would say asmatha or emphazima or pneumonia or fibrosis. Since all the later diseases are pretty serious and there are not other symptoms such as coughing, gagging, coughing up things (very impt!!, ie blood, parts of lung, phlem, etc), i'd say its asmatha... but I'm biases, as i have the disease (so do very many people), and know the symptoms like the back of my hand. Now. what to do. Ah ha. Well i suppose it is possible to get pediatric asmatha medication, but first i'd start with, during an acute attack, doing the following: 1) Remove patient (ferret) from surround, surrounding is causing asmatha (dust, mold, etc). 2) Bathe ferret, to further remove contaminants 3) Dry ferret. 4) If ferret is still exhibiting symptoms, give it coke or another soft drink with caffine. They seem to like it in a glass with ice for some reason. Hold the glass or it will be knocked over. Why caffine? Some don't know but caffine is a g protien coupled receptor blocker, similiar to theophilin, a common asmatha treatment. So this is real cool. If humans are having an asmatha attack, and medication unavailable (for ex, me), i often have as much caffine as i can stand, which helps somewhat...but in ferrets the kick should be much greater, as they have not been exposed to the medication previously (many know that the response to caffine and many drugs deminishes over time). Okay, if it isn't asmatha, what else? Hypertension could be, could be alot of other things. Hypertension - again remove patient from source. There is hypertension medication, but i don't know much about it unfortunately. Other things, bacterial infection or viral (pneumonia or pneumonia like symptoms), pneumonia works by damaging your lungs, making breathing more difficult. Well anyways thats my $0.02. Oh, lastly sorry about getting ferrets and mongeese (mongeese, not mongooses :) in the same family. Many have pointed out they are not. Well, if i were still in my ecology program, my profs would shoot me (just graduated...). Thanks to all. (however, my post was more to inform people of the state of hawaii's mentality regarding anything 'foreign'...very dim view, very unlikely to see a change in ferret status any time soon., but again that is just IMHO, and i hope i'm wrong.) -Rob -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Robert Dejournett [log in to unmask] Graduate Student Graduate School of Biomedical Science University of Texas Houston [Posted in FML issue 2378]