Parents Charged in Ferret Attack; Weasel Had Bitten Before Chewing Off Baby's Fingers

I have owned ferrets for years and never ever had a ferret bite a child's finger and chew it off and eat it!!!  Seriously, this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.  This ferret DID NOT  eat 7 fingers.  Its easy to blame the ferret and not the dog since the ferret was killed by parents who cared nothing for their kids, left them alone numerous times and got high and drunk.  I have a 3 year old living in my home with a number of ferrets, she picks them up, kisses them, loves them, they kiss her love on her and have never tried to bite off her fingers.  I found 2 of my ferrets sleeping with her in her crib when she was a little baby.  She lays with them and they snuggle with her and love her.  I help a ferret rescue and have picked up many many ferrets for the rescue and never would I have ever felt a ferret would chew off my granddaughter's fingers.  Ferrets have a bad rep for no reason.  These reporters need to get their facts straight.

Well i wuz going 2 say "unfortunately accidents happen ". However, wow they left the baby alone w an animal like tht. Cum on common sense ppl, I've got 2 ferrets 2 cats n several uthr animals n only the ferrets n the birds dnt git song. N they luuuv my children but my 1 does hve a foot fetish so i knw better then 2 leave my kids unattended around them n IM 26 yrs old my kids r 2 n 6..... smdh!!

FERRETS CAN NOT CONSUME MORE THAN A 1/4 OZ OF ANY FOOD AND THEY WOULD BE BLOCKED IF THEY HAD EATEN THE BABIES FINGERS HOW BOUT THE DOG ATE THE BABIES FINGERS THIS SICKENS ME THEY TRY TO BLAME A FERRET SHEET LOOK HOW LIL THEY R WHAT BULL I HAVE HAD A TOTAL OF 8  AND THEY HAVE NEVER EVER ATE ANYTHING OTHER THEN THEIR OWN FOOD AND UNLESS THEY WERE RAISED ON BARF OR RAW FOOD THEY WOULD SNUB MEAT AND EXSPECIALLY A HUMAN \

I don't believe this!!!! Ferrets are gentle I have one myself and never has he done that to anybody! My dog has also had 2 liters and never has my ferret bit or hurt any of the babies. He gets close to them and then walks off. If he never did that to a pup why would any other ferret do that to a baby?

This is sad!  I own a ferret and they are the sweetest animals.  Chad (Editor)   Please find someone who owns ferrets and talk to them about the animal.  They have been domesticated for years.   There is a movie coming out soon about a little boy and his ferret called Jake & Jasper:  A Ferret Tale.   Alison Parker is the Director and wants to show that ferrets are truly a sweet animal.     There are certain breeds of dogs who attack not because they are mean but because the owner teaches them to be that way.  Should we talk badly about every dog?    Check out the film on facebook and indiegogo.com

OK. Ferrets do not exist in the wild. Do you really research this stuff or just mindlessly repeat every stupid fact you can come up with?

What idiot, knowing a ferret, a young one, yes young ones have been known to bite, would leave their child alone, especially one so young with a pet of any kind able to have access to it. Neglect? to say the least, they need serious parenting lessons, and to never own another animal. They have proven not to the most responsible parents or pet owners.

 What became of the dogs? didn't anyone think the dogs ate the fingers and the unfortunate ferret was caught licking the blood? apparently there had been bad things said about their dogs also. Aren't dogs carnivores too? They would have had an easier time taking off fingers than the ferret.

Would anyone care if I threw Ryan Waldo in front of a moving bus, just severely injuring him?  I'm don't believe in killing, but I do believe in punishment.  Hopefully that would wipe that smug off his face as seen in his mugshot.  

Do people actually believe that the mother did not wake up in the same room with her baby as the ferret chewed off 7 fingers?  I would wake up at the first sign of crying, expecially if the baby was screaming from the pain from the injury.  I'm sure that the Waldos were out having fun at some drug/alcohol fueled orgy somewhere, and crawled home at 2:30 in the morning.  It's a shame how some loving, responsible people can not have children, yet this trash is allowed of procreate.  I agree with Jb9 that Ryan Waldo should be tried for animal cruelty, as he was cleary covering up his and his wife's negligence.  If he is found guilty for child endangerment, he should be guilty for this also.  When any animal is deemed harmful to a child or family, the animal should contact their local animal rescue.  I can understand a parent's rage over something like this, but it has no merit due to their stupidity.  Anyone who harms children or animals do not have my respect.  

I pray for Baby Waldo and his older sibling.  

You have got to be kidding me. Blame the parents? Thats absurd!

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You have no idea how appalled I am with these parents.  Someone here said, "An animal hurt a baby, who cares? ".  Is this person ("justwondering") siding with the stupid, negligent, trashy parents?  If the ferret bit the baby before, they should have released it to the animal rescue right away.  Instead they were lazy and unresponsible and now something tragic has happened.  And they left two young kids at home while there were out doing who knows what, and they blamed and killed the ferret to cover up their negligence?  I hope they go to prison for a LONG time.  And I hope Mr Waldo gets severely and repeatedly sodomized in prison by well-endowed inmates.  And they should not be allowed to have any more children or pets EVER!

I had ferrets before.  They can be rough at times, so that is why you need to use your head and know when it's good to have them in your home.  My parents waited until I was an appropriate age to have a ferret, not for my safety, but for the ferret's.  It's like people raising violent pitbulls and then deciding to have and raise children, then something like this happens, and they blame the dog.  I just hope the authorites consider charging Mr and Mrs Waldo (how appropriate!) with animal cruelty in addition to child endangerment.   

I loved my ferret very much and was heartbroken when she died.  Hearing about this story made me sad and angry.  I don't mean to offend anyone, but when it comes it children and animals, I react.  I hope that the Waldos will be judged fairly.  And by fairly, I mean several years behind bars.

Firstly these parents were negligent when they brought a ferret into a household with an infant. They knowingly endangered the baby. Ferrets and very young children are never a good mix and demand constant supervision - usually for the safety of the ferret! If this was a young ferret it very likely could be nippy- just as kittens and puppies are nippy and need to be taught how to "play nicely".Responsible parents don't put their children in harm's way.

These parents lied about being home with their baby. BOTH parents lied which means complicity. In other words they conspired to conceal the truth. These parents at one point made arrangements to surrender the ferret, then changed their minds; lieing to their landlord and the Ferrret Rescue!

These parents already displayed an inability to control and monitor their Rottweiler(s) - necessitating calls to animal control. 

These parents were negligent regarding animal care by leaving the ferret loose in the house with the Rottweiler.

Ferrets are NOT wild animals, nor are they weasels! Ferrets have been  domesticated for thousands of years!

As someone who has 10 rescued ferrets and 9 of them have happily converted to eating natural raw meaty bones and whole prey, I have first hand knowledge of ferret's jaw strength and abilities. Ferrets do have the ability to chew off a baby's fingers, but it wouldn't happen quickly and the digestion process takes hours. There would be much more than traces of human blood in the stomach IF the ferret had devoured the baby fingers!

Finding "evidence of human blood" in the stomach does not equate to devouring appendages! The blood evidence could simply have been from the ferret cleaning blood from it's coat.

The parents altered the crime scene cleaned and disposed of evidence. How long did that take before they decided to call 911?

Even a very young baby will reflexively pull it's hands away from pain. For a ferret to be able to remove 7 digits from two hands would take a considerable amount of time and would be practically impossible.

These parents strapped their baby into a mechanical swing and then vacated the premises. Exhibiting extreme negligence and endangerment not to mention deliberate abuse and imprisonment.

Odd isn't it that they confine the child but supposedly allowed the animals loose in the house?

I'm more inclined to believe that the dog snatched off the fingers or that the fingers got pinched in the swing's gearing. Or something more sinister happened to this child at the hands of these inept parents.

The ferret was a convenient scapegoat for the man's rage and generates sensational copy for newsprint.

The truth will only be known to those that were there - unfortunately none of them can speak.

Why are all these comments about a ferret? Who cares!!!

The ferret (not a weasel) had the presence of human blood in his stomach. No fingers, just blood. It takes about four hours for a ferret to digest it's meals, so fingers would still be there or in the poop. The dog was reportedly present yet never accused, not euthanized and stomach contents examined. There was an effort to remove the ferret from the home yet the parents refused. For what reason? Instead the father committed an act of animal cruelty to cover up a case of child neglect.

I run a ferret sanctuary in Illinois. Hearing there was blood in the ferret`s stomach does not surprise me. A ferret will lick a wound, just as a dog would. 

From the first time I heard this story, one thing just didn`t ring true.

I have sat in on all of our ferrets` surgeries for years, and I have seen how tiny a ferret stomach really is. I can`t even TELL you how many ferret stomachs I have seen! (Ferrets have a bad habit of ingesting rubbery items i.e. remote control buttons,pieces of erasers, latex toys, carpet padding, etc. The intestines become blocked.They also can develop hairballs, and since they don`t vomit them up like a cat does, they will die painfully, without surgical intervention.)

For a ferret to eat seven entire fingers (even baby ones) would be similar to you & I eating an entire turkey.

Because no bone or cartilage was found in the ferret, where did the fingers go?

                                                          Cathy Strobach                                                          Zoo`s Ferret Sanctuary, N.F.P.

This portrayal of ferrets is almost laughable because it's so far off the mark of truth.  It's sad that someone so totally uninformed probably actually made money for writing this trash.  Sukie's comment is true and she tells it very well.   I am wondering about the rest of the story...what ever happened to the investigation/paternity testing that was supposed to be done regarding another soldier (NOT the husband) claiming to be the baby's REAL father?  This other man came forth very shortly after the baby was injured.  That was brought out in the original court hearing.  Does anyone know where the Rottweilers were at the time?  I'm asking about the Rottweilers for which Animal Control was previously called on more than one occasion.  I don't suppose we'll ever know the truth, but these parents who wanted to get rid of the ferret and didn't because the other kid(s) wanted to keep it surely got rid of it in a cruel way and apparently made the ferret a scapegoat in the process.

It appears that the parents lied about their whereabouts, so why believe them about the ferret when the evidence indicates that the baby probably lost the fingers in a different way?  

Ferret GI transit time is about 4 hours.  In that time soft tissue and blood could be digested, but most bone and cartilage would not.  Blood was found in the ferret's stomach but no tissues were.  Like cats and dogs a ferret WILL attempt to helpfully staunch a wound by licking it and that could account for the blood.  If the ferret had removed the fingers there would have been remnants of the fingers in the ferret if the incident happened within 4 hours while if it happened before then the bone and cartilage would be in the ferret's waste pile.  

Yet, only blood was found and no tissues, no partly digested bone or cartilage, so the obvious question is how else might the fingers have been lost? 

Notice that the parents removed the swing so it could not be examined.  We all know of cases of equipment hinges which have removed babies' fingers, especially if the equipment was poorly made or improperly assembled.

The records of actual serious attacks by ferrets on babies worldwide are few, only a handful, and each instance on record has involved neglect or abuse, which will not surprise many people since most attacks by domesticated animals involve neglect or abuse.  When adjusted for per capita animal levels the serious attacks by ferrets are similar in number to those by pet rabbits.

There are as many records of ferrets saving lives, often by warning families of fires, but they have helped in other ways.  In my own case a past ferret who has since died brought me around with gentle but persistent kisses and nuzzles of my face when the combination of asthma and a malfunctioning furnace had me almost passed out.

The evidence speaks loudly here and what it indicates is that the ferret could easily have been a scape goat.  A reminder:  when people are known to have lied about serious matters it pays to realize that other portions of their stories need to be carefully questioned.

-- SDC  

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This is horrible ! this article is showing ferrets as being evil, people eating beasts!1. Ferrets and weasels are completly different animals.2. these people left their baby at home alone.3. They killed an animal.4. a ferret would NOT "make a meal of their baby" they are very pacifist except with other ferrets.5.ferrets are NOT wild animals, as the caption states. they have been domesticated for over 2000 years.LEARN BEFORE YOU WRITE this angers me beyond belief.