Hi all,
 
Linda wrote yesterday about someone who apparently has 50 ferrets, and
naturally she is concerned, as most people would be.  She asked how she
would go about getting a law passed to keep anyone from having too many
ferrets.
 
While I applaud concern for the ferrets and the desire to help, I disagree
with the idea that a law is the best answer.
 
Who is to decide how many ferrets (or any other animal) is "too many"?  How
will the proposed number be determined?  I have 4 ferrets and there are
people who look at me like I have two heads when I tell them that.  What if
someone like that was involved in the passing of such a law?  Suppose they
decided that no one could possibly properly take care of more than say, 3
ferrets.  I'd be immediately turned into a criminal.
 
Let me give you a true life demonstration of how well-intentioned laws can
get out of hand.  A man in a small city/town near me became upset because
his neighbor's cats kept coming onto his property and messing up his flower
beds, apparently using them for litter boxes.  You can't blame him for
being upset.  And the neighbor was not blameless - he had asked her more
than once to find some way to keep her cats out of his yard and she
basically ignored him.  As a result he got more upset, went to the town and
demanded that something be done.  What ended up being done was a proposal
to limit the total number of pets in any household to THREE.  Yup, anyone
with a dog, a cat, and 2 ferrets would be in violation.  Same thing if you
had 4 goldfish in a tank.  Or two cockatiels and two dogs.  Now, does
anyone actually believe that someone with 4 pets is a danger to the
community?  And tell me how this wonderful law actually solved the man's
problem?  Someone could still live next to him with three cats that could
come into his yard and mess up his flower beds.
 
I know that at the meetings where this proposed ordinance was discussed,
there was quite the hue and cry from the townspeople who thought that
such a knee-jerk reaction bordered on the ridiculous.  I'm not sure what
actually ended up happening, since the local news stopped covering the
story.  But my point is that you simply can't trust lawmakers to actually
do what is best, or actually makes sense, especially when the people
involved in voting on the laws often decide to make it as easy as possible
and simply make stuff illegal across the board, rather than develop
complicated terms and conditions.  And you can hardly blame them for that
either.
 
Yes, I think it's quite possible that someone with 50 ferrets is in over
their head.  But I absolutely disagree that the only solution is to
potentially infringe on the rights of *everybody* by trying to get a law
passed so that this one person would be forced to give up the vast majority
of their animals.  It's far too easy to depend on laws to fix all of our
problems.  But laws don't fix the problems.  And no matter how many laws
you make, someone will do something, somewhere, that seems to require
another law to "fix" the problem.  Where does it end?
 
If the person with 50 ferrets is not in violation of animal abuse laws that
are *already* on the books, then about all you can do is try to gently and
politely educate this person and if they don't listen, then you have to
step back.  I think shelter operators for the most part know that they
can't save every ferret out there.  Nobody can.  But it's not always the
right solution to try to get laws passed based on isolated circumstances.
 
Respectfully submitted,
 
Karen
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Draw back your bow, let love go, shoot straight for the heart
With all of your might, set your sight, take aim from the start,
To love God, love people
That's the center of the mark.
                                        --  4 Him
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No trees were harmed in the production of this message. However, a
rather large number of electrons were somewhat inconvenienced.
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If you love ferrets, check out:
http://www.ferretwise.org
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[Posted in FML issue 3409]