Eric, a sandy ferret, was discovered playing in the back of a truck on a
trading estate in Bedford, unfortunately for Eric the truck had come from
France.  Immediate panic stations !!!!  Here was a stowaway - horror - shock
- he could be carrying rabies!!!!!!  However, there is every chance that
Eric is an English ferret, he's an entire hob - it's coming up to the
breeding season, the lad might have broken out of his cage and on his
walkabout he spotted the truck, ferrets being dead nosy, this little guy
decides to investigate the back of the truck, there might have been a nice
little French jill on board :-)
 
Trading Standards were called in - or perhaps they were already there - Eric
was captured and sent to a quarantine kennels.  The ferret was kept for 15
days at the kennels and then MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and
Fisheries) got involved their vet examined Eric and announced that he was a
Polecat - don't worry folks we've got 'em in the UK as well :-).  Eric is a
bog standard sandy hob.  We've got used to the RSPCA calling ferrets
*Polecats* but it's a bit much when a MAFF vet can't tell the difference.
 
Several newspapers in the Bedford area carried Eric's story, Mary of Bedford
Ferret Welfare rang a number of people about the ferret.  She eventually
contacted Trading Standards and ended up, after a lot of hassle, talking to
a nice gentleman.  Mary decided that Bedford Ferret Welfare would pay for
Eric's quarantine, he would have been put down if no one had offered to pay
the 650 pounds.  BFW haven't got the cash to hand over straight away - they
will be holding fund raising events etc.  The chap at Trading Standards has
called Mary several times since just to confirm that BFW will pick up the
tab - unfortunately the powers that be won't let BFW hold Eric in
quarantine.
 
One of the newspapers that carried the original story has contacted Mary
regarding BFW and Eric they now want to run another story.  Mary has
insisted that they treat the whole affair seriously, no cracks about ferrets
down trousers.  Two old aged pensioners have already pledged 10 pounds each
towards Eric's fees, so that leaves BFW with just another 630 pounds to find.
 
At first Mary couldn't find out where Eric was being held.  However, she has
now spoken to the one of the people who run the kennels and has been told
that Eric is very friendly.  His claws were over grown, so he obviously
hasn't been a working ferret.  Mary said that she will be visiting Eric
shortly and taking him some toys to play with.
 
As soon as I heard about Eric's plight I wrote to Sukie Crandall - as Sukie
is very involved with the rabies issue in the USA I reckoned she might have
some suggestions about what we could do.  Dick Bossart has kindly offered to
help out with information as well.  As far as I know no research has been
carried out on ferrets and rabies in the UK so any help or information we
can get could prove very useful.  I doubt very much if we can get Eric
released from his sentence but we might be able to dispel some of the
ignorance that surrounds the whole rabies issue.  So it just goes to show
that even rabies free countries need to be prepared for "invaders".
 
Sheila
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Bolton Ferret Welfare
National Ferret Welfare Society Newsletter Editor
http://www.btinternet.com/~sheila/ferrets.htm (Last Update 27 Jan 1998)
[Posted in FML issue 2220]