Since ferrets in pet stores mostly doesn't have a really good time,
I (and others) would like to put a stop to keeping them there.
Yesterday I got the idea to check out what regulations there are
pertaining to keeping ferrets. The surprising result was:
 
   There are no regulations at all.
 
(I'd sort of had the naive idea that if we could influence the
authorities to increase cage size and require water to be
available, profits would decrease enough to make them
uninteresting to sell...)
   There are regulations for cats and dogs, but that's not what got them
out of pet stores: That's a voluntary decision from their organisation,
because "it's bad for their image".
 
Daylight saving time:
The switchover to "normal" time this week sure made a
difference, now they're all more or less awake by the time I
leave for work, so I again have to spend a lot of effort to
protect my breakfast from seldom fewer than two ferrets at a
time.
   It also makes a difference in the evening, when they
vehemently insist on beeing taken for a walk. The longer the
better. Alison is the most difficult, as she almost constantly
runs a little bit quicker than I normally walk (I haven't been
able to figure out is she's tracking dogs, cats and/or hares).
Along the pavements it's no trouble at all, but when she starts
crashing throught the woods (...actually it's me that's doing the
crashing, when I have to crawl through some of the vegetation in
order to follow her) it starts getting difficult as I can't see
all tree branches. The good thing is that she's very easy to
control with the lead and seldom gets stuck.
 
Plan B
All four can slip out of their harnesses, so I always bring a
torch to locate them, in case there's no daylight. (One can
always hope they look your way.) The lower part of the lead have
some dayglo tape so we're all visible to motor vehicles.
   I thought this was good planning, but a nasty experience last
week made me realise we need reflexes on the harnesses
themselves too.
   Plan B is the emergency plan where I disconnect the lead from
the harness and throws them over a hedge or something and hope
they manage until I or someone else can take care of them again.
(Crazy? No, but perhaps paranoid to even plan for such
contingencies.)
   Me, Rustan and Alison were on our way home one night, going up
a hill along one side of the road. Upon noting some dememted
individual kicking and throwing the candles outside the cafe at
the top of the hill, I decided that it was not a good side of the
street to be. Picked the little darlings up and crossed the
street. Before we were fully across, we were intercepted by the
same individual and threatened with instant major bodily harm.
What to do? We were in the middle of a lane of a trafficked road,
so I couldn't drop my darlings to free one arm to fend myself, I
couldn't run away, so it was exactly the sort of situation Plan B
was made for. But not the right sort of place.
   Everything went fine, I didn't even have to do anything
illegal, as I got help from someone else.
--
 Urban Fredriksson  [log in to unmask]
 
[Posted in FML issue 0967]