[censored by request - see administrivia above.  I'm probably being
a little paranoid, but I decided to even censor the state]
 
Hello,
 
I would be very interested in a ferret newsgroup.  I have two ferrets,
Rascal, a male, and Shadow, a female.  They are both fixed although we
did breed them once.  I would like to see a discussion on what we can
do to legalize them instates where they are not legal to own.  I am in
that predicament right now which is why I must request that you do not
use my name in your poll or in any other way.  I bought my ferrets in
Texas in a pet shop.  The owenr happened to be from [state]
and when I told her I was planning to move back to [state] after I got
married she assured me that [state] had just passed a law legalizing them.
So I ended up buying one in Janurary, enjoyed him so much I bought
another in early May, and got married and moved back home to [state] during
first week of June.  Well, when I got back I asked around and found that
ferrets are still illegal to own so my ferrets now have to live a life
of secrecy.  In Texas I used to take them to the mall, to the park, even
got caught sneaking them, (actually just Rascal.  I hadn't gotten Shadow
yet) in a restaurant by our waitress.  She was pretty cool about it though.
After we moved up and got our apartment (no pets allowed :-) ) we bred
them.  We kept Shadow and young in a large box in the closet.  One night
we kept hearing the man who lived below us sliding his closet door open
looking for the mice or whatever that kept squeeking.  he never knew it
was coming from our apartment.  We ended up taking the youngun's to a
pet shop in [another state], where they are legal.  Now we live in [state],
where they are debating on legalizing them but not having much luck.  People are
saying that ferrets attack babies.  I've found that ferrets have
 
[Probably no worse than the "Dog eats baby" headlines that seem to
come out a couple of times a year.  Does anybody have real references on
this?  One of our ferrets, Mocha, seems to be homicidal towards babies
of ANY species (human or ferret).  Just the smell of a baby - puffed
up tail etc.  Tried to kill Toby when he was small (He's too big
now - they've finally become friends).  Around babies we simply do not
let our ferrets run free - next thing you know the baby grabes the ferret
hard, and the ferret retaliates - as almost any other animal would.]
 
different personalities and you can't say all ferret attack babies any
more than you can say all pit bulls are blood thirsty monsters.  I would
never own a pit bull but I refuse to condemn the breed because of a few
attacks.  The attacking dogs may not have been trained to fight by they
probably came from fighting stock.  Getting back to ferrets I have round
one vet that will treat my ferrets if they are sick but will not touch
them otherwise.  We used to let them have their own room to run around
in but Shadow had gotten something cuaght in her intestines and we
almost lost her so now we keep them caged.  They are litter boxed trained
but if they think the box is too dirty, even if its only been used a
few times, they go on the floor.  Well, I gotta get back to work so
please keep in touch and lets get this newsgroup going.  By the way if I
don't answer directly it's because I don't full understand how UUCP
works and have a hard time getting mail outside of [company].  Next week I
start work as a systems administrator so I'll probably learn more.  Also
on my present node I'm not running Unix so that limits me but I may
have access to a Unix node on my new job.
 
                        Catch ya later,
 
[Is there a way we can help?  One fo the ferret books does have some
anecdotes on legalizing them.  I will put a reference in tomorrow.]
                                                                          
[Posted in FML 0001]