I too subscribed to another pet owners list.  It was a list dedicated to
particular breed of dog.  There were some good folks on it, but also a lot
of snobs.  Finally, the discussion turned to the price of these puppies, and
many of the breeders agreed that if a prospective owner could not afford the
$1000 purchase price, they could not afford the vet care and upkeep of these
pets.  With typical purebred chauvinism, they assume that their favorite
breed is more intelligent, more complicated, more sensitive, and much bigger
(the last is true) than any other dog, and therefore only people who can
afford $1000 for a liesure purchase could be allowed to have them--no matter
what the market said about the value of the puppy.  I wrote and told them it
was ridiculous, that purchase price and upkeep were two different sections
of a dog-owners' budget, that you can't make assumptions about a person's
financial status from superficial evidence, like whether they think you're
overcharging for a puppy, etc.
 
I got many letters of support, and many flames.  I had mentioned how
supportive and open the ferret mailing list had been in my post, and one
person wrote a very rude letter to me.  At the end of it was this scandalous
insult: "Please go get a FERRET!" I had to laugh.  Better for everyone if
this person didn't know what a delight they are, and how I must restrain
myself from acquiring more.  The joke was on her.  Anyway, I don't subscribe
to that list anymore.  Many purebred fanciers develop strange attitudes
about their pets.  They don't want other people to own them, because they
think most people lack the ability to understand them.  Witness the outcry
against the expected rush on dalmations.
 
Myself, I am quite willing to tell a prospective ferret owner where to get a
cheap ferret at the same time I am telling him how much work and at the same
time how much pleasure will be involved in owning them.  And I never
recommend ferrets to anyone without a sense of humor.
 
Oh, recquisit funny story.  Recently, my husband and I bought one of those
self-propelled balls for the ferrets.  It had a "playful weasel" attached.
The ball, even though it cost $10, was a flop.  They followed it around for
a while, and eventually seemed kind of irritated.  The weasel we took off
the ball, and they unceremoniously carried it off to a hidey hole.
Yesterday, we suddenly wondered where the weasel was.  Mithril eats fabric
and things, so we started looking.  We found the string we had tied it to
(for dancing weasel games).  The end of the string had been gnawed off and
the weasel was gone.  We searched everywhere in that room, and it is a sort
of empty room.  We shook out all the blankets, looked in the baskets and
boxes, everywhere.  Finally, I got to the point of palpating Mithril's
abdomen and checking the backyard for alien spaceship skid marks, and LO!
there appeared in the middle of the room, ON THE FLOOR, the weasel.  The
ferrets appeared not to have moved from their napping spots, but I think
they felt we were getting too close to the hiding place and decided to end
the search.  I think they just might have some of Melissa Litwicki's socks.
 
Ferret reference: Check out Robert Jordan's new _Crown of Swords_.  He
mentions ferrets several times.  Especially in the context of spies.
"Sending ferrets into the walls after rats."
 
Happy ferretting,
Catherine
[Posted in FML issue 1779]