Adventures in melatonin implanting.

Last Saturday Maurice, ( He's the one with his eye's
crossed in the photo in the Ferretwise Holiday Party
entry ), consented to drop by and help me get the
melatonin chips stuck into Starlight, Lil, and, JJ.
It turned out to be a little bit of an adventure.
In my experience it can go easy or the ferret in
will not be happy about it. The needle to do this
is pretty large. I remember Elliot didn't like it
at all and would jump around and complain. He bit
Dr G. once, which was very out of character for him.
Then there are Lil and Starlight who don't even notice
it happening.
We did Starlight first, she is a a very old little
girl, she is pushing 8! ( Go Starlight! ). So she
is very mellow. Getting her implant in was a breeze,
she didn't even look up from the ferratone to
notice anything happened. I waited a little to long
for her, she dropped some weight. But happily she is
coming back, so I will have to be a little more
attentive about that.


Since we were on a roll, we went and got Lil. Now
she is a poster child for these things. Last October
when she got her first chip, her tail was just about
bald. Now she has the most beautiful winter coat,
see the picture: Lil. She has put a lot of weight back on too, she
is a very sturdy ferret. I wanted to get her all set
so she wouldn't lose any ground. For this particular
case however, thick fur was a liability. We set her
up with some feratone on a saucer and I held her
while Maurice went to work. As I said, when she got
her first chip, it was quick and she didn't notice,
but her fur was a lot thinner. This time We couldn't
seem to get past the fur. Maurice tried 3 times, and
it kept bunching up in the fur and popping back out.
Maurice tried 3 times, and finally we had to stop
for a bit and let Lil calm down, she started to
notice.

So I went and got JJ, who was fast asleep, actually
in what I like to call the sleep of the dead. The
only reason you can tell they are alive is you can
see them breathe, and they are warm. I thought, cool!
We will be able to do this and he won't know! We laid
him down and Maurice tried, unfortunately caught some
hair and it popped out! ARGH! JJ woke up at that point.
So I gave him some ferratone and we got it in on the
second try. Now back to Lil. I decided to go get my
electric clippers and we gave her a little shave in
the spot we were aiming for. That done we let her
settle down in her room again, the clippers are very
loud. So after about 20 minutes we tried again, and
had success! We were glad, and so was Lil!