Teddy encountered a lot of obstacles in life, but as our vet once noted, he was a real trooper. Teddy began his life in the care of a breeder who had more ferrets than he could reasonably handle. He kept them outdoors in wire mesh cages, and sometimes predators would come by and attack the ferrets from below. Teddy had a disfigured toe on his right rear foot as the result of such an encounter.

Nevertheless, he grew into a beautiful cinnamon ferret, with the softest fur of any of our ferrets --- or any other ferret we've seen. But he still had difficulties, some of them comical. When he first came to us, he didn't much care for the "ferret goop" which we give the ferrets as treats or rewards for good behavior, but eventually he grew to love it. In fact, he would eat so much of it so quickly that his mouth would often get glued shut, and we'd have to pry his mouth open again so that he could keep eating.

Unfortunately, his teeth weren't in very good shape, and in a couple of years he had developed serious problems. The pain from his teeth was inhibiting him from eating, so we had to have his eye teeth removed. We also had to remove a tumor growing out of his side which developed due to an overactive sebaceous gland.

Our biggest scare with Teddy, however, came on New Year's Eve 2001. We had scheduled our ferrets' annual checkup for that day and, because we didn't have enough going on (what with a 9-month-old and all), decided to host a spur-of-the-moment New Year's Eve party.

Unfortunately, three of the six ferrets had severe reactions to their inoculations. Dave ended up rushing Tasha, Morrie and Teddy to the Animal Emergency Clinic in St. Paul while Jen stayed home to juggle Mom and hostess responsibilities. For some reason, the reaction caused the blood to thicken in all three ferrets --- so much so, that their hearts had difficulty pumping it through their bodies. Tasha recovered enough on the way to the Emergency Clinic that she was able to return home with Dave, but Morrie and Teddy spent the night, and the outlook was most grim for Teddy. Before leaving for home, Dave signed a 'Do Not Resuscitate' order for Morrie and Teddy.

THAT was scary!

But, trooper that he was, Teddy amazingly pulled through, though it's not clear that he ever completely recovered. For months after the incident, it seemed that Teddy had a cold or something --- he sneezed practically all of the time. We would joke that the night in the Emergency Clinic had weakened his immune system to the point that he was now allergic to ferrets, including himself, but no one ever figured out why he had this reaction.

Like his companion Maxwell, Teddy was more laid back than our other ferrets, and usually didn't play with the others too enthusiastically. However, shortly after we had moved into our new house, we were surprised to see that Teddy had made his way out of the basement, and was investigating the main floor of the house! As it turns out, Tasha, a consummate escape artist, had already figured out how to push the plastic barricade out of the way to get out of our ferret room, and Teddy had wasted no time in following her out. It was, unfortunately, our last humorous moment with Teddy.

The very next day, Teddy went to the vet to have surgery done on his insulinoma. The vet kept him overnight for observation, and he died during the night. The whole family congregated at the vet's office, as we had done with Toby, to view the body and mourn. And although he was barely 18 months old at the time, Nicholas showed some understanding of the situation. As we were preparing to leave, Nick picked up the pet carrier we had used to bring Teddy to the vet in first place, and motioned to Jen to put Teddy back in the carrier. It was touching somehow to see that Nick understood that Teddy was part of the family, and perhaps it's a good thing that he was still too young to understand why Teddy wouldn't be coming home.