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Our site was last updated 8/18/08
Mojo's Story
This was originally published in The Animality.Part One: A Ferret Rescue
by Karen Marsh-Lovvorn of Rogue's Gallery Ferret Rescue
Last spring Rogues Gallery received a phone call from a veterinary
office in northern Wake Co. about an injured ferret kit that had been
found by a local resident. The vet's office said he was lethargic,
dehydrated, and had a leg injury, but at the time they did not feel that
the leg was broken. Joseph (the other half of Rogues Gallery) picked
him up, and when he brought him home, I did a quick exam and
estimated his age at somewhere between 5 and 6 weeks - maybe
younger, since he was very small. He was obviously in some pain
from his leg, but the greater concern was his overall poor condition.
We had no way of knowing how long he was "on his own", but we did
know that the average life expectancy for a domestic ferret "in the wild"
is only about 3-7 days. They have little hunting instinct and are too
small to forage for much food, so the miracle that he survived at all is a
great tribute to the strong will and courage of these little animals.
We quickly discovered that he was absolutely terrified of humans and other ferrets. Any attempt to make contact with him resulted in hissing, hiding, and biting. The way he was acting was more suggestive of a wild weasel or mink than a domestic ferret, and his "wildness" made us uncertain whether we would be able to help him at all. We'd had success with "problem ferrets" before, but never one that bad! Would we be able to bring back the sweet little animal we knew lived inside that terrified wild creature, or had his true personality been obliterated by his traumatic experience? We were determined to find out!
Wearing leather gloves, we managed to get him bathed and into a cage. He had fleas and a mild case of earmites, so we treated those, and provided him with food, water, and warm blankets in a "nest box" in his cage. He rattled the cage bars for awhile before he curled up in his box, but once he settled in, he slept until the next day, when we found him up, and eating ravenously! We named him "Mojo" (as in the voodoo word for "black magic"), because of his dark blackish-brown color and because it was almost magical that he survived! We continued to try to make friends with him, but he still refused to allow us near, and would hide whenever we walked by.
Several days later, we noticed a "sore" on his hip, and found that a maggot had bored approximately 3/4" into his body. It wasn't until after we'd removed it and cleaned the cut that we realized how close to death he had been! Normal body temperature for a ferret is approximately 102 degrees Fahrenheit, and flies usually only lay their eggs in living flesh when the temperature drops to near-death levels. If a kind person hadn't found him and taken him to the vet, he may not have lasted much longer!
From that day on, Mojo began to trust us a little, and improved dramatically. His appetite continued to increase and he rapidly put on weight. We spent time with him every day, talking to him, petting him, and offering him treats, and within a few weeks he would even allow our kids to pick him up. We introduced him to another ferret, a female, a few months older than he, who had also had a rough start in life. She had been poorly socialized and neglected by her former owner, and because she was aggressive toward people, was slated for euthanasia when we rescued her. The two "youngsters" hit it off almost immediately, and soon became fast friends. Ginger (the female) "adopted" him, and taught him how to be a fun-loving ferret. Soon he made friends with some of the others, and also got along very well with our family. Unfortunately, he never quite overcame his fear of "outsiders," and when people or ferrets he didn't know came too close, he reverted to his old ways. We felt that his unpredictability made him unadopatable to all but the most experienced and patient "ferret folk," so decided to keep him ourselves - provided that he could get along with our 5 ferrets. Unfortunately, our ferrets had other ideas, and a couple of them refused to welcome "the new kid," so we had to start looking for a new home for him. It was about then that - whether through fate or providence - Pam and Eric Sessoms, TriFL members and wonderful "parents" to Sonic, Sunny and Willard - decided they were ready to take another ferret into their home. They came over immediately when we called, and agreed on the spot to take him, even though they knew he'd be a lot of work.
Part Two: A New Home
by Pam Sessoms
When we arrived at Karen and Joseph's home to pick up Mojo, we found him asleep in his cage. Karen gently roused him, and soon he was bouncing around, playing with abandon. We knew Karen had grown very attached to him and had even wanted to keep him, so it was sad taking him from her home, even though we knew she would still be able to see him.Mojo still liked his "nest box," so we took that with him, hoping it would help ease the transition into his new home. When we arrived at our home, we gave Mojo a little time to get adjusted to us and his new surroundings. Then we began slowly introducing him to our other ferrets one by one. They were all very curious about him, but Mojo's history made him very wary of the strangers, and he was so defensive that he only seemed interested in "attacking" the others. All three of our ferrets simply tried to get away from this strange new beast, though, and none of them seemed at all interested in fighting back. In retrospect, we should have taken the first introductions more slowly, perhaps by keeping Mojo in his cage where he felt secure, and then letting the others greet him through the cage mesh at first.
We tried again, more slowly, the next day, and the next day, and the day after that. Slowly, we began to see progress. And then, an amazing thing happened. Willard, our large, extremely placid boy, seemed to adopt Mojo. The first thing we noticed was that Willard stopped trying to avoid Mojo's attacks. Instead, he would gently pin Mojo to the floor and lay on top of him; then he would get off and stare directly at Mojo. If Mojo tried to attack again, he would repeat the process. Then he started trying to teach Mojo to play "civilized" ferret games, such as hide and seek and chase. They quickly became fast friends. Our other two ferrets, Sonic and Sunny, took a little more work; they were still pretty threatened by Mojo and were not as forgiving of his earlier attacks as Willard, but they too began to tolerate him with time.
Within about three weeks of bringing Mojo home, we could leave all four ferrets together without fear of a horrible fight breaking out. This relatively calm, happy period, was unfortunately short-lived. One evening, Mojo suddenly began dragging his entire hind end, paddling both back feet uselessly to the sides. He never had gotten over the leg injury he had when he was initially rescued; an x-ray conducted during a vet visit earlier had shown that the he limped because of a healed fracture of the hind leg. The fracture had healed remarkably well, but it had caused the leg to twist slightly, and the broken let was slightly shorter than the other one, causing the funny limp. This terrible dragging of the entire back end, though, was completely different, and at first we thought that perhaps something had happened to his other back leg.
Our vet, though, immediately knew it was a spinal cord injury from the way Mojo was moving. Another x-ray didn't show any broken vertebrae, however, so we didn't know the exact nature of the injury. Our vet explained that any inflamation or swelling around the spine could be putting pressure on the spinal cord, resulting in the paralysis. The goal of treatment was to reduce the inflamation and allow it to heal, thus taking away the pressure. We will never know how the injury happened. The vet immediately gave Mojo a steroid injection and gave us instructions to keep him completely confined to a cage. We could tell that our vet thought the prognosis was very grim. We were heartbroken; the thought that he had come through so much only to have his life ending like this was terribly sad.
We should have known to never under-estimate the healing power of a ferret!
The next chapter in Mojo's history was long and exhausting. We were in nearly daily contact with our wonderful, patient vet, who listened to our descriptions of exactly how the ferret was moving, and he told us how to adjust the levels of the steroid pills we were giving Mojo, according to his progress or lack of progress. We wound up quadrupling the initial dose; I balked at this initially because I was afraid of what long-term problems might be caused because of this level of medication in such a young animal. Our vet, though, made me realize that there was certainly nothing to lose and possibly everything to gain from the medication. We also were in contact with experts over the Internet, and their advice was helpful as well. Mojo never seemed to be in any pain, but his confinement was causing depression, and we began allowing him out of his cage for brief periods of sliding around on the floor in order to help cheer him up a bit. We also kept a small, ferret-proffed stuffed animal in his cage, and he spent many hours grooming, biting, and dragging the stuffed creature around in his cage.
Slowly, very slowly, we began to see improvement. One day, he actually placed both back feet in their proper positions, arched his back up, and took one hopping step before flattening out again. We were deliriously happy at this progress. After that, more hopping steps were to follow. We held the high steroid level for about two weeks, and then we began to very slowly taper the dosage off, fearing that Mojo's progress would stop. Amazingly, it never did. By the time he was completely off of the steroids, Mojo was not sliding at all anymore. His gait was not normal, and he had no feeling in the last three-quarters of his tail, but he was certainly a fully-functional ferret. He could run, wrestle, play, and do all of the other things that ferrets need to do in order to be happy. Sonic, Sunny, and Willard were very happy to have Mojo back, and they all spent long periods grooming him and cleaning his ears.
Mojo is so happy that we tend to forget about his rough beginnings; there are rare reminders, though. Sometimes he panics at the sight and/or smell of new objects. For example, one day we brought in a large, carpet-covered multi-level cat toy for the ferrets to play with. In typical ferret fashion, Sonic, Sunny, and Willard immediately rushed over to it and began sniffing and thoroughly investigating it. Mojo screamed and ran for cover, and when we picked him up, he was trembling all over. We calmed him down and then sat nearby the terrifying object with him. He eventually worked up the courage to watch the other ferrets playing with it, and then after a few minutes, he climbed down from my lap and started looking at it himself. Now it is one of his favorite things.
Today, Mojo is a happy, crazy little guy and is back to his original slightly-off Mojo gait; he continues to regain feeling in his tail, and now he has feeling in all but the very tip. A lot has happened to Mojo, and he is not even a year old yet. We can only hope that the rest of his life will be a little bit less eventful than the first part has been!
Postscript: Mojo lived a wonderful, happy life. He did eventually develop arthritis, as seen in x-rays, in his hips, very likely from the twisted leg and simply from having rear legs of different lengths. An extremely high-quality x-ray taken near the end of his life revealed that indeed, he did also have a fractured vertebrae that had healed long ago; it simply did not show up on x-rays when he was a kit. Mojo eventually was released from this world at the age of six, after lymphoma spread to his lungs, liver, and other organs. He is missed, but mostly, we are glad to have known him.