Bill Killian wrote:
>Some folks involved with zoos don't think ferrets are the only animal Mr.
>Hanna really needs to learn about.  Just what they've said to us anyway...
>
>Some don't like the mere way he brings predator and prey species onto the
>talk shows where they are on stage at the same time.  Can't recall an
>exact time though to cite.
 
Thank you, Bill, for pointing this out!  Count both of us as zoo folks --
Belinda is a zookeeper -- who have long held Mr. Hanna in, shall we say,
less than high regard.  I am so happy to hear you point out his penchant
for bringing multiple animals onstage at the same time.  David Letterman
gets a lot of comedic mileage from this when Hanna appears, bumbles around
(obviously afraid of some of the animals he's trying to handle), and then
actually looks *surprised* when -- for example -- the juvenile cheetah
lunges for the capybara that's been wandering around unsupervised and
chasing the equally unsupervised pot-bellied pig while the smallish hawk he
brought out first flaps blissfully along the rafters of the studio and
randomly dive-bombs the agitated juvenile camel standing alone near the
band.
 
Jack Hanna is something of a joke in the zoo field.  As others have already
pointed out, he repeatedly spouts misinformation, misidentifies animals,
and generally says and does such ludicrous things that one truly wonders
why his home zoo didn't fire him a long time ago.  He must be bringing in a
lot of money with his PR campaigns.  But his anti-ferret prejudices are not
too farfetched when one considers the source.
 
(As a small aside, about two years ago we even had another, quite
well-respected high-profile zoo person (who shall remain nameless) come to
give a talk and say, in front of God, a room full of students, the media,
and everyone, that ferrets were wild animals and that tasting milk put them
in an attack frenzy!  This is part of what motivated us giving an
educational talk on ferrets to the same group of students later that year.)
 
It's truly ashame that people like Jack Hanna are out there, but since this
is such a long-standing pattern of incompetence and prejudice on his part,
I seriously doubt that writing letters to him will do any good.  He's had
his share of that, as his words to Larry King showed, and yet he is as
clueless and prejudiced as ever.
 
Therefore, I think Sandra (Mary Reeves)'s idea about boycotting Hanna and
his products will be much more productive than wasting letters, even the
best and most eloquent of them, on a man who obviously just doesn't care
about the accuracy of his information in the first place.
 
-Tasha and Belinda, with Carter, Xena, Gabrielle, Bear, and Squirt as our
indignant fuzzy children... and cats Kaylar and Little Boy as curious
onlookers.
[Posted in FML issue 2539]