Dale Miller brought up some good points about dealing with ignorant
people who abuse animals (obviously ferrets in this case).  In my
defense however, I must say that these people were beyond reason.
They simply did not see that there was a problem...
 
For the sake of bandwidth, I tried to keep my story short but I left out
a few details that might have painted a clearer picture.  When my wife
and I first spied the kid with the ferret we were VERY friendly. We're
always excited (as I'm sure most of you are!) to meet other ferret owners
and see their slinkies. At first we were very friendly until the obvious
problems smacked us in the face!  Yes, I did calmly ask the kid to clean
the ferrets infected ear (infection from it's pierced ear) and also said
he should get it some water becuase he was hot.  It was the kid's attitude/
response that started to raise our ire, when he shrugged us off with, "It's
no big deal." and "I paid for it." ("it" being the ferret). To top it
off, the father/adult(?) displays the same attitude/ignorance (like
father/like son), then our tempers really flared. I don't know...  My hat
goes off to those of you who could have weathered it with tempers in-check.
I'm normally a laid-back person and it takes a lot to raise my blood
pressure and I really don't like confrontational experiences.  These
people were not receptive to reason and our frustration lead us to the
point of raised voices/threats.
 
Where we stand at this point....   I contacted the NH SPCA and they
recommended calling the Animal Control Officer.  I called the Tyngsboro
(Mass) police department and got the number for the ACO.  I left a message
on the ACO answering machine and got a call-back Monday afternoon. I
explained what we observed and expressed my concern for the ferrets well-
being (both from the abuse angle and the MA FFZ angle).  He said he was
more concerned about the abuse than the legal status of ferrets.  I also
told him that I had been in touch with the Bossart's and they were willing
to take the ferrets into their shelter if they were confiscated.
 
I spoke to the ACO again this morning (just got off the phone actually...)
and it turns out that car (all I could give him was the license plate # )
is from Dracut, MA, ( which is out of his jurisdiction ) and had not been
re-registered (big surprise!) therefore they were having a little difficulty
tracing the current address.  He told me that he had contacted the ACO
and Humane Society for Dracut and had them looking into it.  He said he would
get back in touch with me or someone from Dracut would when there was some
news to tell.  I stressed the shelter being willing to take them should
they be confiscated and he still sounded all for that.  I have to say that
for working in a FFZ, this guy does NOT sound too eager to snatch those
babies up and kill them.  His attitude has me feeling a bit better about
contacting authorities in MASS, well, in this case anyway.
 
Last (but not least!) congratulations to Katie and family on the new baby!
I should be posting a similar message within the next month!
 
P.s. My apologies to anyone who's sent me mail this week and had it bounce
back. We lost the system disk on our VAX (where I have my mail forwarded to)
earlier this week and it took Field Service a few days (1 controller, 2 servo
boards and 2 HDA's later...) to figure out the problem!
 
TGIF!!!!
 
Mark Ouellette
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[Posted in FML issue 0870]