Have now personally heard reports of three cases in which ferrets had severe runs combined with mouth sores, and one report second hand. One looked like full-blown nastiest ECE, one was between that and mild runs, one had mild runs but the worst of the mouth sores reported. The second hand report one sounds like the sores and the runs were very bad. Could be multiple things out there which also carry mouth sores, but folks are honing in on the sores. Could the sores be part of a general mucus membrane inflammatory process? The other grouping which was cohesive involved kidney illness. Both groups reported dehydration problems. Ah, regional jokes are hard to understand between countries some times. In the US the jokes are that Southerners are inbred, use out-houses, and wasp-waisted women will say within 3 seconds of your crossing the threshold "Oh, where are my manners?" and then pass you a mint julip with arsenic. The jokes about the North Easterners is that we are all cold and selfish, with no sex lives, possibly robots (but very good ones) or androids (I'll never tell.), and constantly trying to control the West becasue we are all have JD Rockefeller cloned brains (This part believed by some to the point where if an organization in the East tries to help out West it is accused of trying to subjugate the West but if it doesn't do anything it's accused of being cold and self-centered.) Mid-Westerners are thought to be all big blondes who serve everything with either Cool Whip or Mayonnaise, especially with hot dish or jello (Pass the mint juleps!) and wouldn't know an emotion if it slapped them in the face except when they run from the suana to the hole in the frozen lake. The person was just joking about the AC, that's all. Hey, my hubby was brought up in Montana (You know that place where you find only grade school educations, mad men suantering the streets on their bow legs with bowie knives in their boots, women in curlers driving pick-up trucks with gun racks...) so we KNOW that the Canadian Provences also have this type of good natured ribbing, because Montanans get it from Canadians as well as from folk in the States. Reminder: hair loss confined to only the tail is very commonly acne, not adrenal... I sincerely hope that no one here will want o get a primate after the post on the monkey and ferret. For many years I studied primatology till a tropical illness caught in Suriname stopped me. The typical pet monkey dies at a very young age, often has rickets (since many of them are NW and require more light and more vitamin D than old world monkeys). Most have too little space and not enough exrecise to be healthy. Many go insane because most of the species are troop animals requiring a lot of contact which reflects their species' behaviors. The typical way that one is obtained from the wild is that the parent (in some cases parents) and often other troop members are killed for food and any young surviving the fall from the trees (arboreal species) are raised by the villages till a smuggler buys up a bunch. In one study of intercepted wooley monkey young there were usually about 20 baby monkeys to a box, and typically all but one to three had already died and the remaining ones were in those dark areas with corpses. I won't say any more on this topic since it's off-topic and suspect that the person who wrote did not know these things, but I don't want to see the continued decimation of threatened and endangered species or the abuse of animals by pet trade in primates. A typical monkey type which would survive 25 to 35 years in the wild or in a zoo under the right conditions normally lives about 5 years as a pet from what I have read. (Oh, they often carry illnesses humans can get, too, and some species can do serious damage if they go insane.) If anyone wants to discuss this off-list I'll do so. Sukie [Posted in FML issue 2387]