First let me say I was absolutely overwhelmed and that is a lot since
I have known this list for over 15 years and it has always supported
the ferret community, but the private responses I had concerning the
loss of our first Rainbow ferret was mind boggling. WONDERFUL BEAUTIFUL
cards with the most loving messages. This was both for Rainbow Bourke
and little shelter boy Sly. Thank you all period for the support and
giving me the will to just keep going on with this effort.

Wish there were awards to give out for the loving gifts, cards,
donations, and labor put into this mission. I understand I got two
people mixed up with my thank yous and will be going back to retrofit
that later. It was hard to keep records with 4 rooms of ferrets and
with all the help. I played the gofer plus once I laid something down,
it was only a 50/50 chance I would find it again.

#1 I want to thank the Houston Area Ferret Association for their
consistent efforts for these little tykes, they donated financially,
material wise (Oh the supplies they sent), gifts for the kids, and then
a caravan of workers, over a dozen at a time, coming in to give these
guys more attention and care than the normal shelter babies get. And it
wasn't just once, no they consistently made that 600 miles round trip
and it is to them I feel credit is due to have made this thing work. I
might be able to organize a bit of stuff and keep records half way
straight but no way this 65 year old woman could have physically
handled the volume of work needed. Now that they have left with their
little prizes, we are down to 44 I think angels left here with promises
of quit a few more to go out real soon. All have gone to private homes
so far.

#2 THANK YOU to all those who wrote our vet. Already you overwhelmed
the mailman who was watching where all these packages were coming from.
Now the vets know how you were behind them, they were touched AND awed
for they had no idea how strong we were - they knew me and how much
stuff I drag into them but never that this was country wide. That
really really made me happy for you all to let them know

#3 Our own people here in the area, Leanne comes from way over past Ft
Worth 3 to 4 times a week and she doesn't stop, no way will that girl
sit down and visit for a minute without producing, Megan who is way up
North comes 2 to 3 times and brings another employee from Petco and all
of these people have been known to stay well past midnight to finish
the job they started. Thomas and Heather just took off with 2 huge
garbage bags of laundry to do at their place and coming back tomorrow
with the van as I still have 3 grocery carts stuffed with dirty laundry
to be done - each cart will hold 4 washer loads and I have the heavy
duty washer too - this is really taxing my septic tank system, if it
wears out, the replacement is so costly and so many regulations I don't
have to go through now.........scary. They also took off with one of
the worse bitters in the group save Jaws that went to Jimi in Houston.
Both these homes know how to work that out of their system.

Anyway, this is just for today's thank yous. I still haven't gotten the
cutesy pictures up of these kids learning to play.

I will tell you one tale: I had to stop and watch this one little girl
grab up one of those huge rubber balls lacy like, rubber but big holes
in them, easy to carry and tried to push it into one of the 4" sewer
pipes. When that didn't work, she jumped inside and tried to pull it in
after her in, it took her a while of dropping it and getting it again
and again, pulling and tugging till she got it stuck in there. Finally
she is tired so she goes out the other end of the tunnel and starts
gathering up all her crochet eggs to stuff into the tube. It would have
been great to watch a normal ferret do all that but to know this was a
gal who had faced a very ugly future and had never got to play before
was so possessive of everything, just warms the heart.

Now, back to paperwork and WILL promise to start putting more of these
pictures in the album so all can kinda see what we in Texas are
watching.

You all are WONDERFUL.

Millie and her Cleaning Crew
www.Txferretrescue.org

[Posted in FML 5928]