Heart break- please learn from my mistake…

by Kathy
(Arden, NC)

Two nights ago our darling 6 year old boy Max crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

I have come to the horrible and stomach turning conclusion that I am responsible for Max’s death… you see my 10 month old was keenly curious about Max, and for their mutual safety I put Max’s cage on top of the dryer..the only surface out of the baby’s reach in our sparsely furnished playroom. (The wasn’t intended to be a permanent solution..only a momentary one, until I could get a table or something into the room for his cage) We have just moved into this new house, and things are quite choatic, and we hadn’t determined exactly where Max’s cage was to be on a long term basis.
The washer and dryer are in a alcove of sorts..though there is a window in there, and a light..but closable folding doors. Well, a few minutes later, I started the dryer, and shortly threrafter asked my 10 year old to close the doors because the baby was trying to go mess with stuff in that little laundry area. And I forgot about it…

When my 10 year old went to retrieve the clothes from the dryer about 2 hours later, and found Max laying in the cage floor, and he was dead.

The fatal combination here… one, the dryer wasn’t properly vented outside because the people who hooked everything up were morons..and in the back of my mind I knew this, but wasn’t thinking. (Fixing this was on my husband’s to-do list…but had not yet been done) Two- ferrets are prone to heat stroke…which can be fatal within minutes. Again, I knew this very well…but wasn’t thinking. It never occurred to me that with the dryer running that little enclosed space would turn into a sauna… but it did. And I know this, because the dryer is running now, and I just opened the doors to see how much time was left and hot humidity hit me. It’s my fault… I should have known better.. I DID know better, but I just wasn;t thinking… And I killed my own beloved little friend.

Please please please…learn from my mistake. We are all deeply grieved, and I am sick over my own stupidity…please don’t ever repeat my mistake with your babies!