My husband and I have three children and we all love animals.  We had
gerbils, rats, and hamsters and everything was going well until my
husband became allergic to rodents.  He breaks out in hives when he
touches them, so we could not replace them as they passed on.  When our
youngest son's dwarf hamster died at the extreme old age of five years,
we decided he deserved a new pet, but we needed to find something
non-rodent.
 
I said that I was willing to help care for anything except a stinky
ferret.  We happened to be in the car discussing the stinkiness of
ferrets, so we stopped at the pet store so I could illustrate my point
about just how stinky they are.  My husband dragged us away from the
ferret cage and out of the pet store 30 minutes later saying that we
didn't have a proper cage for an adorable little ferret.  We went home
and researched the proper care of ferrets, ordered a cage from Martin's,
and bought a copy of Ferrets for Dummies.  My husband looked up the local
ferret shelter and after some discussion we decided it would be best to
adopt.  So I called the shelter mom and told her I would like to adopt a
ferret for my 13 year old son.  She said, no, absolutely not.  Teenagers
are likely to get busy with high school, get girlfriends, go away to
college, and it's just not the right time in their lives to adopt a
ferret.
 
It took me a good 30 minutes to talk her into at least meeting with us
and explained that all of the pets in our home are family pets, though
the ferret would take up residence in my son's room.  So, we went to the
shelter with all three of our teenaged sons, and we spent the afternoon
playing with every adoptable ferret in the shelter.  We wound up adopting
the most adorable little ferret, who unfortunately doesn't care for the
company of other ferrets.  It's been three years.  My now 16 year old
son is still the ferret's best pal, though he loves all of us.  His out
of cage time is part of our daily routine and he travels with us when
we go on vacation.  He's seven years old and when he passes on to the
bridge, we will be adopting two or three more not so stinky ferrets
from the shelter.
[Posted in FML issue 5095]