Hello everyone,
 
While I wholeheartedly agree that the unfortunate bite incident with Rocky
hurts our legalization efforts and could well have been avoided, anyone that
portrays our media as unbiased, and the failue to legalize ferrets here as
simply due to the mistakes of legalization proponents, is absolutely
innacurate.
 
The California media in general has, and continues, to take the words of our
two state agencies totally on faith.  Never once has the media taken the
time to investigate the veracity of the information coming from DFG or DHS.
That ferrets are a threat to wildlife and people have been statements simply
taken on face value.  With very few exceptions, mostly from smaller papers,
not a single reporter has bothered to dive beneath a very shallow look at
this issue.
 
A recent report about two infants attacked by a ferret in Orange County
quoted our Public Health Veterinarian as saying "ferrets perceive infants
as prey."   It's difficult for unscientific remarks to get much more
inflammatory than that.  No comment was made about the fact that ferrets are
legal in every other state on the continent, and virtually every other
country in the world.  Doesn't this beg any questions for an intelligent,
unbiased reporter?  Questions such as, "Why are ferrets legal virtually
everywhere else?  Why such a controversy in CA?" Anyone taking the time to
investigate this last question would discover that the controversy, the
difficulty is due to the lies by our Department of Fish and Game.
 
And, based on the 800,000 dog bites each year that require medical
attention, and the 16-20 deaths from dog bites, where is the question that
askes if dogs percieve humans as prey?  I don't know if the situation here
is a case of a lazy press, or another example of the difficulties of
overcoming a decade of ferret misinformation, but you have to ask yourself,
what attention does a headline such as "Dog Bites Man" get when there's
800,000 of them each year?  Now, "Man Bites Dog" is another matter and the
rarity of a ferret bite requiring medical attention (the one in Orange
county did, the one in San Diego required a band-aid) makes the kind of
headline the media loves.
 
I was very sorry to hear about the bite instance and I know that our efforts
will pay some kind of price for it, and that is unfortunate.  (I applaud all
of those that put the nip in perspective and do not add to the hysteria, our
Department of Health Services can be counted on to dish up enough hysteria
over any ferret bite to go around.)  Ferret enthusiasts in CA have made
their share of mistakes, but it has been in an arena that was rigged against
them from the day our Department of Fish and Game signed up the CA
Department of Health Services, the CA Farm Bureau, CA Waterfowl, the Sierra
Club, Audubon Society, Planning and Conservation League and League of
Conservation Voters, not to mention some at UC Davis to help them fight
legalization.
 
Ferret enthusiasts in California should be proud of their accomplishments in
the last year.  In spite of the powerful anti-ferret lobby, we won a 64-8
vote in the Assembly.  The current bill, though blocked at this time by one
Senator, is still alive, and a meeting has been called by one of the members
of the Appropriations Committee which may signal some unexpected help.  Ten
or more members of the 13 member committee have stated that they will vote
for the bill if it comes off the suspense file.  Many of these members had
stated at the outset that they did not support legalization, but the hard
work and huge letter-writing campaign by so many ferret enthusiasts in CA is
the reason most of these committee members have re-evaluated the situation.
 
Let's keep up that kind of good work and try very hard not to add fuel to
the hysterical fire our Health Department will surely do its best to keep
burining.
 
P.S.  If anyone has a comment or suggestion to make to me directly, please
e-mail [log in to unmask] since I no longer receive the FML.  Thanks.
 
Jeanne Carley
Californians for Ferret Legalization (CFL)
410 Mountain Home Road  Woodside, CA  94062
(415) 851-3750   <[log in to unmask]>
http://www.ferretnews.org-- CFL Website
CALIFORNIANS, YOU CAN FIND OUT YOUR STATE SENATOR BY VISITING THIS SITE!!
CALL AND WRITE YOUR SENATOR AND GOV. WILSON--DON'T LET OUR BILL DIE!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For pure ferret fun, check out http://www.ferretcompany.com
[Posted in FML issue 2177]