Here's an interesting situation I ran into Wednesday night.  I live in
Colorado and work in a pet store that does handle ferrets.  (And before
anyone says anything, they were pretty well treated BEFORE I got there,
and are MUCH better treated now that I work there -- mostly because I
absolutely will not tolerate mishandling of the ferrets, and if they don't
like it, they can fire me.)
 
Anyway, Wednesday night I had some people come in and purchase two of our
older ferrets (our store takes in a lot of rescue types, albeit never sick
ones).  While I was explaing the policy of the free vet visit to them, they
mentioned they were leaving at six-thirty Thursday morning for California.
 
I thought "Oh dear" and immediately asked if they were aware that ferrets
are illegal in California.  Well, they told me that they had called the Fish
and Game Department and were informed that ferrets were legal provided they
were not in the city limits, and were legal in city limits with a permit for
specific reasons -- like educational purposes or something.  At this point I
nearly choked and mentioned that I follow ferret politics rather closely,
and as far as I knew, whoever told them that was WRONG.  As Kirk had come in
to pick me up by this time, we informed them that all information we had
access still states that ferrets are illegal everywhere in California, and
ferrets are confiscated at the borders if they are found (they were also
told they didn't have to worry about declaring the ferrets).  We advised
them to hide the ferrets going across the borders and to contact the CDFA
(unfortunately, I couldn't remember what CDFA stands for, so that's all I
could tell them) as soon as possible upon reaching home.
 
So, my question is this -- eh?  Was this F&G person just confused, or has
the law changed when I wasn't looking?  I'm really, really worried about
these two ferrets.
 
Michelle
--
Meet my pets.  The ferrets (Taz, Coffee, Daphne, Tia, and Gretchen), the
gerbils (31 of them), the zebra mouse (Racer), the rats (seven of them), the
budgies (Sky), the cockatiels (Snow and Spice), and the fish (various).
RIP Honey,  Summer, Grendel and Peggie.
[Posted in FML issue 1352]