Dooks to everyone, and sincere condolences for babies lost. Well, yesterday I think my heart stopped twice. I was reading Ferret Aid Society of Toronto's web page and for some strange reason went to the section of the names of fuzzies gone to the bridge. There was the name "Harley Frame". I quit breathing and dashed a note to Randy to make sure nothing had happened to Harley. Wow, is this gal good or what---I got a really fast reply saying the Harley Bug was fine. Whew. Breathe in, breathe out. Okay. Go home last night, fuzz butts all over us. I pick up Kit, whose just a little over a year old. Now the other day I asked Larry "Do you think the hair on her tail is thin?" and got "No, always like that." Lemme tell ya all. Trust yourselves. I look at her last night and half her tail hair is gone! I gave out this strangled "LOOK AT HER TAIL" and his eyes flew open. She was acting normal, playing, dooking, trying to climb up and pull my sweats off me, looking at me like I'm crazy for grabbing her tail, typical fuzzy terrorist. Well, little sleep last night. My vet opens at 7:00 am, and is open Saturday's till noon. So I was on the phone by 6:55 this morning, and he said get her in earlier the better. So upstairs I go, wade through the merry mayhem, find Kit knocking the snot out of Scully on the bed, grab the carrier, grab Kit, put Kit down, pull Genie and Scully out of carrier, put Kit it and close door, pull Genie & Scully off the top of the carrier, turn and go through the rest of the mayhem with Suzy doing the world's greatest blocker routine down the hall, get my shoes on and go to the vets. Of course Kit is letting me know in no uncertain terms she doesn't like this carrier. She doesn't say a word, but the digging and door grabbing tell it all. We get to Dr. Kubisz and get right in, out of the carrier and onto the scales. My 'little girl' weighs two pounds (more than I thought) and of course she isn't going to hold still for squat. Dr. K gets his gloves on and picks her up and examines her. Says the adrenals are fine, no swelling anywhere. Says it looks like a fungus! He told me multiple ferrets will have this problem. So he sends his son for a culture and I hear "Hey, you little devil" and she's got a death grip on his rubber glove. So, I pry her off his finger, his son comes in and we do the culture. This will take two weeks to know what kind of fungus. Meantime, he asks how often I bathe them. I told him since they normally hate to be bathed, not very often. But now I have an anti-fungal shampoo I have to bathe them with once a week and a spray 2x a week. So home we go and it's bathing time for ferrets. My hands look like I tried to knife myself, and my kid thinks watching me bathe them was hilarious. She helped me spray them, I sprayed everything and right now the little buggers are sound asleep, no itching. He said the cats might get it and they will have to be sprayed possibly bathed. That's when I told him I'd want to tranquilize the cats to bathe them. Saw somebody bathe a cat onetime that wasn't used to it and this person carried scars to the end of his days. My cats don't get bathed, and I scar terribly! So, after learning it was a fungus not adrenal or anything more serious, my heart rate has returned to normal and I can breathe again. Every body hug your babies! Rebecca (the clawed one) and the other two human slaves The band of merry mayhem: the 8 fuzzies who rule the four cats who think they're free of ferret control but the fuzzies are gaining! ======================= Rebecca McFarlane Secretary Basic Medical Sciences School Veterinary Medicine Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907-1246 Phone: 765-494-8632 Fax: 765-494-0781 "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup" [Posted in FML issue 2773]