6.18.96 I hope this is less than 125 lines...it looks like it to me.  Re:
"Human chow": Scooter, our little female sable, age 8 and blind as a rock,
dearly loves asparagus, with broccoli stalks coming in a close second.  She
can go through an entire six-inch stem in one day.  Shredni, the white
terror, dearly loves anything chocolate, with a special passion for oreos.
We let him lick the ice cream dishes clean when we're done, but haven't
given him more than an oreo crumb since he dug a bag out of the cupboard and
ate at least half of it.  He didn't seem seriously ill, but refused chow for
a day or so and lay around belching and burping (you wouldn't believe the
farts).  His poop was suspiciously oreo-colored, too.  (Since then, we've
ferret- and toddler-proofed all our cupboards).
 
Re e-mail privacy: Sadly, there is no such thing as private e-mail.  I write
for several financial publications, and every time I do an e-mail article
there's always several new anecdotes about people getting fired or being
dreadfully embarassed due to an e-mail snafu.  NO E-MAIL IS PRIVATE!!  I
don't care what is promised, it's too easy to glitch up and hit just one
wrong key (right, BIG?), thereby creating various forms of havoc throughout
virtual reality.  Ferret e-mail ("f-mail"?) is particularly notorious for
misbehaving.  Privacy is one of the few redeeming virtues of snail-mail.
 
Re Hartz products by Hartz Mountain.  This note is not for the squeamish,
but Hartz Mountain Corp.  hires labs to test their products on animals -
very cruely.  In the film "Inside Biosearch" (PETA has it on videotape), a
testing lab (Biosearch) in Pennsylvania applies a concentrated solution of
Hartz flea spray to a tiny kitten.  The kitten goes into confulsions, crying
in agony.  Mercifully, the poor little thing eventually dies.  Hartz
Mountain paid for that ghastly test, and many more like it.  They know
exactly what goes on in testing labs and hope we don't.  Please, excuse the
shouting, but: DON'T BUY HARTZ PRODUCTS!!  Incidentally, the Hartz flea
spray killed many cats around the country.  The company eventually pulled
the product off the shelves, repackaged it with what they claim are "better
instructions" and it's back in its original, virulent form, in a new
container with new "directions."
 
I better shut up now before I start ranting on and on.
Rainey
 
*** the more i see of people, the more i love animals ***
*** if you haven't grown up by age 35, you don't have to! ***
 
[Moderator's note: Email is decently private in my experience, but I won't
get into that here other than to agree the *potential* exists for a lack of
privacy.  But this really doesn't have anything to do with ferrets, nor
does the bit about Hartz.  If anyone would like to respond to Kris please
do so off list unless it is pertinent to ferret care.  I'm not defending
Hartz or such places but it's just off-topic.  Thanks, BIG]
[Posted in FML issue 1606]