Archive for October, 2008

Insulinoma? Epilepsy? An aberration?

Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 8:38 am  
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Am just back from seeing Fiona, my vet, and she doesn’t know what’s wrong with Muis :-(

This morning, I came into the bedroom and saw her looking strange while in the bottom of the chest of drawers.  I picked her up and put her on our bed and she seemed to stagger a bit then fell over before righting herself.
It was one of those “OH NO!” moments so I called Philip and asked him to have a look at her, to see if he had any ideas.  He agreed her back legs didn’t seem to be working properly so I picked her up and put her into the drawer where she sleeps.
I went to the kitchen and fixed up their smoothy, calling them while I was doing it, and both Angus and Muis came roaring into the kitchen, licking their lips.  They followed me back to the bedroom where I put the dish down for them, and got stuck into the smoothy with great gusto.
It was such a change from just a few minutes ago and I felt quite relieved that Muis had reacted so positively.  If I hadn’t seen her strange behaviour beforehand, I wouldn’t have thought there was a thing wrong with her as she acted 100% normal.
When I told my vet I was worried about what happened being a symptom of insulinoma, she said that if it was insulinoma, Muis wouldn’t have come racing into the kitchen – she would have been tucked up in the drawer until I put her in front of the smoothy.
She checked Muis’s stomach and there was no evidence that anything hurt her when Fiona pressed on certain organs.  A good sign, I hope!
Fiona thought that it could be a neurological problem, something like epilepsy, so I was told to keep a diary handy of anything odd which I notice in Muis’s behaviour and that way she will have a better idea of what specific tests need to be done otherwise it will be a lot of money for lots of tests.
I hope it’s not insulinoma, having had my gorgeous CJ die from that 6 years ago, and I also hope it’s not anything neurological.  Maybe it was heat stroke or something which made her feel funny, as it’s been a really hot day today, but since she’s always inside the house, I can’t imagine that being the cause.
Well, I will keep you posted if there is something wrong and then at least it will be a step-by-step description of the onset of a disease which hopefully will help other ferret owners in the future.
This really is the part of ferret ownership which I hate!  The ominous feeling that your ferret is sick and there’s really nothing you can do to help make it better.  Bah humbug :-(
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A grey ferret? I don’t think so!

Saturday, October 18th, 2008 at 6:44 am  
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Someone had emailed me, asking questions about ferrets in Shanghai so I was just trying to find some answers via Google and I came across a link which said “Headshot of Grey Ferret With Attractive Face”.
That really took my interest so I clicked on it and came across this picture …



Picture Source: schani
and Animal Photos!

I know it kinda looks like a ferret but it’s obviously not one, and I wish people would check that they have the right species of animal before tagging it.

Another of the tags for this picture was “zoo”, so if this picture was taken of an animal in a zoo, and the zoo called it a ferret then that is doubly bad.  
The reason it annoys me is because it helps to perpetuate the myth that a ferret is a wild animal – it isn’t, and so perhaps people should be sure that they have the right tag for their animal before putting it up for all to see.
It’s a great photo but it’s a picture of an ichneumon, also known as a ““Pharaoh’s rat”.  I spoke about the ichneumon in my section about Ferrets in Ancient Times because I was trying to find proof that ferrets were around during ancient Egyptian times, like some people claim, and I honestly think that, like this picture, the ichneumon was mistaken for a ferret in those days too.
I must say seeing such a clear photo of the head, it does look remarkably like a ferret but when you see the whole body, like on this Spanish site which is all about “El Meloncillo” (the ichneumon), you’ll see that it’s really nothing like a ferret.
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Seamus, the flying ferret is at it again :-(

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 9:24 am  
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He is such an athlete – I don’t think there is anywhere I can put stuff up out of the way around the house. (Well, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration but it does seem like that at the moment!)

Both Philip and I are still suffering from jet lag (yes, it does get worse as one gets older ;-) ) and we react in different ways. Since coming back I have been dead to the world at night, whereas Philip wakes up around 1am most nights and he can’t get back to sleep for a couple of hours.
Last night he heard a noise that was accompanied by the sound of a bell so he knew it was one of the ferrets. The girls are oldies and sleep like babies through the night but with the young boys it’s a different matter!
He followed the sound to the kitchen but then couldn’t work out where it was coming from. He walked into the laundry and heard the bell behind him, so turned back into the kitchen and started opening up various cupboards – he knew we hadn’t trapped a ferret inside a cupboard but thought maybe one of the boys got inside and couldn’t get out.
He kind of zeroed into a cupboard under the microwave shelf … opened the door and didn’t see anything but the bell was quite loud and as he straightened up, he found himself looking at Seamus’s twitching nose next to the microwave!
Philip said it was almost like Seamus was laughing at him!
The rotten little so-and-so had somehow climbed up the chair we have in the kitchen and threw himself onto the shelf.
That chair has been sitting in the kitchen since we got Seamus and never, NEVER has it ever been of interest to him until last night! Augh!!!
Philip took him off the shelf then, when he came back into the bedroom, he woke me up to tell me all about Seamus’s new party trick. I just pulled the pillow over my head in despair :-)
Unbelievable.
So — I can’t put my bottle of soda water on my chest of drawers since he knows he can jump up there from the bed; I can’t put my soda water on the dining table as he gets up there and wreaks havoc; he can shimmy up the back of the camphorwood chest so I can’t put anything breakable there … and now this!
Why did I ever mention that I’d never had a silvermitt boy and was wondering if they were as hard to handle as the girls. Oh bite my tongue! Silly me!


When I woke up this morning and went into the kitchen, I saw that the basket with the potatoes was on the floor so obviously young Seamus had another go trying to land onto the shelf but, since Philip moved the chair away from its original spot, he missed and brought the potatoes down. Serves him right :-)
Now, on a serious subject …. I was very pleased to see that Canadian firefighters now have special pet resuscitation kits with them so that they can revive animals if they’ve been overcome with smoke inhalation. That is a great idea and let’s hope our Aussie firefighters get hold of those kits to use!
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Ferrets in Croatia

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 6:43 am  
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I’m very happy to say that two ferrets named Felkica (Spotty) and Slapica (Slipper) have been making the rounds in Zagreb and have been educating the public about the pleasures of ferret ownership :-)

(photo by Bruno Pavuša)

I confess to being a bit nonplussed about why the ferrets were thought to be “African skunks” initially but then it was corrected to “Asian ferret”.  However when I checked on my “Ferret in Other Languages” site, I saw that the Croatian word for ferret was “tvor”, and when I checked with the Croatian-English dictionary, tvor did, in fact, mean ‘skunk’, as well as ‘polecat’ and ‘fitchew’.

I then did a reverse check on words, putting “ferret” into the box and translating it into Croatian.  The word that came out was “omčica” … so maybe I got it wrong when I put tvor down.

This is a preview of Ferrets in Croatia. Read the full post

Seamus my flying ferret, and Kahlua the Cuddler :-)

Saturday, October 4th, 2008 at 9:02 am  
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Oh wow! 5 weeks isn’t a long time but it is when you have ferrets :-)

I remembered to put my bottle of club soda on the top of the chest of drawers because Seamus is a devil when it comes to getting bottle tops off … and silly me thought my bottle was safe! Oh no – not with Seamus in the house!

This is a preview of Seamus my flying ferret, and Kahlua the Cuddler :-). Read the full post
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