A Wakeup Call...Halloooooo...to ferret shelters needing more money to
meet expenses of operation. Give this your consideration. Remotely rent
out some of your shelter ferrets to an absentee owner. This is sorta
like having someone take care of your ferret, but you house the ferret
at your place.

What you need - not much. You need a quality, high resolution digital
color camera.that can be linked to your computer. You need soft light
reflector/diffuser boards or sheets as shadow eliminators You need
establish a daily schedule of photo shooting based on the expected
activities of a given ferret. You need a gaffer or lighting assistant
with knowledge of how to use a palm-squeezed mouse squeeker. And to put
it all together, to coordinate photos and sentences at or less than an
8th grade level, a writer/editor for the purpose of captioning and
threading the photo sequences in an informative narrative, preferably
laced with clever humor.

To ingratiate the paying customer/adopter with the ferret of choice,
any questions asked are to answered in the manner of comic book style
speech balloons emanating from the ferret's head/mouth to give the
viewer the sense that the ferret itself is answering the question in a
roundabout manner that can lead to misunderstanding or humor, as for
example, a really dumb ferret who, on occasion, delivers a witticism
of strained nobility. This is essentially a ferret cartoon.

Lastly, you will need a controlled, password protected website so that
only a given customer can access his own cyberferret repeatedly at any
time of his choosing. A given cyberferret sequence will last for a
week or so with changes that are added every few days like an ongoing
adventure of that customer's cyberferret.

A suggested introductory fee paid through PayPal would introduce
Cyberferret for a short time, say three days, after which a fixed
charge would be applied for one month of cyberferret adventures.

I think this is an unique opportunity for a shelter operator to
increase his income and likely would have a lot of fun doing this.
The big drawback, as I see it now, is the personal commitment to work
at a project like this four hours or so on a daily schedule and never
missing a day. Now that may be the tough part.

I am toying with the idea of a flying ferret, by name of Baron von
Ferret, goggles and streaming scarf, who's adventures will involve
flying a big, red, three-winged airplane of World War 1 vintage, namely
the infamous Fokker D1. It'll be a takeoff (no pun intended) of sorts
of the Red Baron and Snoopy and their adventures in the skies trying
to best each other. I need to come up with an English/Brit name for
the Snoopy character - maybe the Earl of Snottshire or whatever?

If you'd like to participate and get some training, please let me know.
Also, if you have any ideas how this could be made better, then let me
read you, OK?

Edward Lipinski  Concocter of LUMPS
Chief cage cleaner & Mustelid maintainer at FERRETS NW Foundation,
a 501 (c) 3 nonprofiteering group under the supervision of the National 
Heritage Foundation.  Doesn't that look impressive or what.?

[Posted in FML 6176]