Greetings all, I am and have been terribly angry to the point of being
furious about the paper's neglecting the words "alleged, allegedly,
supposedly etc." when they write about this alleged "ferret attack"
and publish it in this "alleged" paper of theirs! I was so PO'd about
it that I wrote to the three people that were listed as editor,
assistant editor etc. and the only one to respond was C. Fischer at
<[log in to unmask]> and I told him that even the most
terrible humans accused of the most horrifically gruesome murders to
average criminals accused of simple crimes and even traffic offenses
are granted the dignity of being innocent until proven guilty and
reporters using the words alleged & allegedly in their reporting of
such crimes. He only had issue with me for calling them/making the
statement: "You and your paper are being Judge, Jury and well that
man was the executioner of that poor little ferret that was obviously
abused/mistreated, neglected or at the very least had been starved if
he indeed bit/chewed off the fingers of a baby!" That is what he took
issue with and told me that the results of the necropsy had already
come in and they found blood and fingers in the stomach..."pretty
damming evidence" he said.

I better just copy & paste his letter to me rather than trying to quote
him from memory... Here's his response to my letter.:

Mr. Forrest- Thank you for writing. We did state in our articles
"according to the report" and "according to their statement" but I take
your point that the ferret seems to be getting all the blame in this.

To quote the chief of police, something I did not print in my stories,
the necropsy found "blood and fingers" in the stomach. That seems
pretty damning evidence.

I haven't been able to corroborate the information on the other bites,
and their lawyer appeared to have presented pictures last week to
refute that in court, but either way, I absolutely agree with you that
the facts of their testimony don't add up. Of course I cannot state
that in an unbiased news article unless quoting someone else, which
is what I did in Friday's article about the family court hearing and
the commissioner's sentiments.

I take issue with you calling us judge and jury in this. All we're
doing is reporting what facts are available, not speculating or being
irresponsible with our opinions.

Nevertheless, thank you for your concern, and I may contact Ms.
Simpkins or you if it's all right. I also planned on speaking with
the animal control officer in GV, who is a ferret owner himself.

Thanks again,
Chris

If any of you want to write this guy and press the issue of why hasn't
the necropsy report been published you can. I didn't in case what he
says is true and the report has actually been made available and it did
indeed report fingers and blood in the stomach...wait, ferrets don't
swallow anything as large as a baby's finger whole! If anything the
report should state something like "human blood, bone and tissue" at
best, right? He did say to me that "fingers" were found to be in the
ferrets stomach. Take issue with that while you write him about his
story, just don't tell him how you got his email address...<lol> It's
easy to find, it's on the top of the page where I read the story, their
website. I did respond to this letter asking him if "all" the fingers
had been accounted for. I also told him in this response that ferrets
have a short digestive tract to point out how long or short of a period
of time it would take for this ferret to feel "starving" and I think I
asked if anyone had asked these neglectful parents how often and what
they fed this poor little ferret, saying that if they fed it raw meat
and on a less than adequate schedule, etc.. I'm not as sharp as I used
to be, I should have picked up on that "fingers & blood" thing right
away! I also notice he said he got that necropsy information from that
smart a** Chief of Police, that's another cocky little man that needs
to be taken down a peg or two!

My best guess on a scenario for this, if the ferret did eat some of the
baby's fingers is that this ferret was starved and neglected, possibly
fed raw and the parents left their 4 month old baby boy asleep,
swinging in a rocker/swing while they went down to the neighborhood
Bar & Grill to have a few drinks and stayed there until closing time of
around 2 o'clock (That's when bars close here in Texas) and by the time
they finally staggered in, found the baby bloody, screaming and missing
fingers. Without a necropsy report having been read by someone I trust,
I will never believe that ferret ate the baby's fingers! I haven't been
able to read all the FML posts since this all started so if something
was already covered, sorry 'bout that.

Micheal Forrest, Ferret Rescue and Adoption of South Texas
www.ferretrescueandadoption.com

[Posted in FML 6950]