Hey Ho FML ;o) Ferris sez ta all fuzzles - stop dookin fer a minute - close yer eyes - and imagine me - gibbin ya a BIG FUZZY HUG! An ta all da fertfolks - ya kin close yer eyes an imagine - BIG WET SMOOCHIES! We simply had ta share our own terrifying experience on this one . . . >From: "Randall R. Duke" <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: heart worms & etc >One more thing and I'm out of here My husband smokes and when she can >Wheezer will get into the ash tray and just roll around in cigarette >butts and ashes . Anyone else have a ferret with such a nasty habit? >She loves it. Oh please PLEASE - DO NOT LET HER!!!! Quite apart from the "ashes" being a "respiratory" problem themselves, should she breathe them in, as well as an "irritant" to their eyes, there's truly an incredible danger from the "butts" themselves. I too am quilty of being a smoker, and while I have NOT ever allowed a situation where any of my ferts have ever had access to any "ashtrays" in my home, I have had the awful misfortune of encountering another problem due to my smoking habit. You see, I "roll" my own cigarettes, using a small machine, tobbacco and "rolling tubes", and while I have always been careful of the "tobbacco" itself never being within fert reach, knowing the possibility and terror of "nicotine poisining" existed if my fuzzles ever ate any of it, I'd at the same time, never considered the little box of tubes a danger to them and used to leave it on a table, closed but none the less in reach of my darling, that is until the day that my sweet Ferris decided to suddenly take an interest in da box, needless to say, the fact it had been closed was irrelevant, and Ferris had it open in no time, and immediately took to chowing down on the "fiberglass filter" of one of the tubes!!! I can NOT tell ya how I thank GOD that I heard the commotion and arrived there in time to see what was going on, and I knew right away that he was most definetly in danger of the filter causing an obstruction! I also thank God that my immediate response of giving him a few doses of vasoline was sufficient to assist him in passing that filter material, BUT, it very easily could have meant a surgery to save my darling's life, were it not entirely for the Grace of God in the matter saving us the terror, spite perhaps my own deserving it, fer not being careful enough with my tubes, as you can imagine, I have NOT wasted that second chance God gave me in the matter, and I DO ALWAYS NOW, make very sure that Ferris NEVER has an opportunity to injest ANY of the materials related to my own bad habits! I'm sharing this story, NOT to come down on anyone, but rather only in a hope that my mistake may now save someone else from making the same very serious error. Now you may be inclined to defend your situation, and to state perhaps that in your case you are "watching" and that there's no way the fert could injest any of the filters, and that may even be true, HOWEVER, I would answer you this, that if a fert is allowed to develope some habit, be it rolling in ashtrays or another, it's likely to carry out that habit continually, and as such, there is "possibility" that a day will come when her fuzzle does so when ya aren't watching, and as a result DOES decide on that one occasion to "eat" a butt, and believe me, PLEASE, it only takes a second fer them to do so, and if in fact you're very confident that the fuzzle "won't" ever eat one, then you are likely NOT going to assume it has if it does, and so perhaps will not be as in our case, so very fortunate as to immediately treat the fert to prevent the obstruction from occurring and doing any damage, and instead will be in a situation where you only realize what's occurred when it's too late and yer babe is in surgery to save it's little life. AND that's also of course assuming that an obstruction is all you'll have to deal with and that the fert has not in fact suffered from nicotine poisining, which we would like to point out here, doesn't take a great amount of nicotine to accomplish, indeed if you care to check you'll find there is also a very high instance of "human babies" which suffer nicotine poisining from the injesting of cigarette butts from ashtrays each year as well! Thus if a butt contains enough nicotine to poisin a "child" then surely it can do the same with a much smaller in size ferret. All I'm saying here is if ya follow the "murphy's law" rule and assume that if something bad can happen it just might, prevention is the best and only way of truly assuring that it dosen't! It's my sincerest hope that in sharing this we shall serve to save any others from that same predicament which we found ourselves in. The simple, truthful fact is, cigarette, cigar, products are a danger to ferrets. And we pray we have prevented you from finding that out the hard way as we did! Ferris "But I likes fiberglass mom! Oh no, NOT more vasoline again!!" and his OH SOOOOO Grateful To God mom Deba Brezden [Posted in FML issue 2433]