Journalscape/gabriel

ADMIN PASSWORD: Remember Me

:: HOME :: GET EMAIL UPDATES :: Click on Kathy Gabriel and read my stories :: 2-in-1 Romance by me (but the back cover's misspelled!. grrrrr.) :: November is National Novel Writing Month! :: The Feel Good Manual - happiness can be learned :: Mugs with the wet ferret :: Fractured Frugal Frieds - the best frugality site around :: The ferrets, and other pics by a talented local (very local) photographer :: Kettins_Bob's journal :: Clarion SF & F writing workshop :: Genevieve's journal (Clarion classmate) :: Phil's website (Clarion classmate) :: Nnedi Okorafor's blog (Clarion classmate) :: Online magnetic poetry :: Dave's interactive html tutorial :: Make a snowflake here - WARNING: Addictive! ::

gabriel
Love and ferrets and pretending to be a writer.

2004-02-11 5:36 AM
Sebastian (gross entry alert!)

Previous Entry :: Next Entry

Mood:
hopeful

Read/Post Comments (0)

The ferrets are: Sally and Tazo are running around. Sebastian is resting.

Weather: cool and clear

Reading: The Green Branch, Edith Pargeter

Listening to in the car: The White Dragon, Anne McCaffrey

Sebastian has ECE. He's getting treatment from us, mainly from Gregg. He is eating when we make him eat, and he seems to be fairly willing. He doesn't like the medicine or the subcutaneous Ringer's lactate. He's taking three different antibiotics now and Kaopectate for the diarrhea, which is the part of it that has him so dehydrated. I am so glad Gregg's around to do all this stuff. I help, but he's the main ferret nurse. If it was just me, Sebastian would be in the animal hospital, or maybe even dead. I think that if we hand't noticed how sick he was that he would have been dead by now.

ECE is a new disease, an epidemic was supposedly discovered and the disease started getting researched in 1994, but it is interesting that Marshall's, the ferret mill that supplies 70% of the pet ferrets in the US, has been researching it since 1992. Marshall's raises mink, too, and supplies ferrets to labs for flu vaccine testing. I don't know what happens to the ferets taht survive the testing, or whether any of them do. It has been specualted somewhere that ECE might be caused by a mutated version of a virus that causes some disease like ECE in minks. Other critters get it, too, though in some it affects the stomach rather than the intestines.

Read about ECE here. It is interesting that my link is green since ECE is also called "the green slime." Yuck.

My little girls had ECE when we got them, exposed most likely when they were babies at Marshall Farms. I noticed as soon as they joined the hosuehold that their poop smelled different from other ferrets i have known. And NO, I didn't get my nose next to it and sniff it. That is not necessary. I read that they can continue to shed the virus for a long time. I should have known this. I did know this, and then I got Sebastian anyway. My brain failed me when I got ferret madness and wanted another one. I don't know why I didn't hink of it, or if I did, in some part of my mind, and pushed it aside. So if he dies from this, as about 20% of adult ferrets that get it do, then I killed him.

But he won't die. He is basically a strong, healthy ferret, he is only a year and a half old, and he had a lot of body fat which is probably what got him through the first stages when we weren't aware of how sick he was. He doesn't have extra body fat now. He still looks big because he has a lot of hair. He reminds me of a polar bear.

Read/Post Comments (0)

Share on Facebook

Previous Entry :: Next Entry

Back to Top

:: JOURNAL HOME :: SUBSCRIBE TO THIS JOURNAL :: Click on Kathy Gabriel and read my stories :: 2-in-1 Romance by me (but the back cover's misspelled!. grrrrr.) :: November is National Novel Writing Month! :: The Feel Good Manual - happiness can be learned :: Mugs with the wet ferret :: Fractured Frugal Frieds - the best frugality site around :: The ferrets, and other pics by a talented local (very local) photographer :: Kettins_Bob's journal :: Clarion SF & F writing workshop :: Genevieve's journal (Clarion classmate) :: Phil's website (Clarion classmate) :: Nnedi Okorafor's blog (Clarion classmate) :: Online magnetic poetry :: Dave's interactive html tutorial :: Make a snowflake here - WARNING: Addictive! ::