From:
Mohr
Date: 2003-02-15 07:18:26 UTC
Subject: blockages (was re: Blaze and deafness?)
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-Id: <5.1.1.6.0.20030215011107.00bb6238@pop.central.cox.net>
At 08:45 AM 2/14/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> Is this because she ate things she shouldn't have, or were her blockages
>due to hairballs or something? Does she have trouble with hairballs? Does
>she choke or cough a lot while she eats?
No, she doesn't seem to have any eating or intestinal problems or
hairballs. The blockages were both due to her *personality*. :P The first
one was the insole of a tennis shoe. So, no more shoes. We scoured the
house top to bottom for anything else we could remotely think of that might
cause a blockage. Of course, six months later she managed to locate the
*one* thing we'd overlooked -- the rubber stopper to my steam iron, which
is on a shelf in the kitchen. (Don't ask me how she got to it; I'm still
mulling that one over years later.) The thing was, luckily, too big and
hard to pass into the intestines, so the vet managed to get it out of her
tummy before things got too out of hand. I don't see how she ever managed
to bite the thing in half and swallow it in the first place, since the
rubber was very hard. But she has never been one to understand what is and
isn't in her self interest. She will eat ANYTHING.
Why do ferrets do this? Isn't this clearly an anti-evolutionary
behavior? Does domestication play a role in bringing out this kind of
behavior?
-Natasha