You may think that pet ferrets are cute, but you shouldn’t forget that they’re big weasels with a taste for rabbits — and other small mammals:
A 4-month-old baby boy from Grain Valley, Missouri, was in critical condition after a family pet ferret ate seven of the infant’s fingers, and the boy’s parents are under investigation for neglect and failure to obtain a $100 license for the exotic pet, police chief Aaron Ambrose told CNN Tuesday.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times… ferrets make the worst babysitters.
Their other babysitter was a Rottweiler.
Better to link to the original news article or the local television station broadcast.
More facts there. For example, the mother was asleep in the same room. Also the baby was in a carrier, not in a crib. That baby would have been crying the first nibble.
On top of that a six month old ferret would have to be quite hungry to eat that much in one sitting. I can’t see my adult ferrets eating that much if they were decently fed.
Of the many ferret owners I’ve talked to who have read that article we pretty much agree that if it were the ferret it had to have been starved and took quite a while, during which the mother, in the same room, either was too out of it to be aware of the baby’s cries or ignored the cries for quite some time.
Any way you slice it the headline should have read, “Breeder’s neglect results in a baby losing 7 fingers.” They most likely neglected the ferret, they certainly neglected the baby.
I think it was obvious from the get-go that the parents were negligent. That said, I don’t think ferret-lady’s appearance on the news strengthened the pro-ferret camp’s credibility with the public at large.