Hello fellow ferret lovers, As many of you know Ferrets Etc. has
suffered severe financial blows the past few years.  I have thought about
closing the rescue many times, but everytime I see the ferrets sweet
faces I can not bring myself to do it.  This year will the 13th year I
have ran Ferrets Etc.  pretty much by myself.  LAst year I made a plea
to people and mainly the media to get the word out about our troubles.
 
Unfortunatly the plea was not answered by the media.  And the word did
not get out to many.  I scrapped along this year the best I could.  Many
of you know we were losing our home that we worked so hard for and wanted
to raise the funds to save it.  Well we did lose it, we had to sell it
and now rent it back.  It is heart breaking after working so hard to get
this home.  We now pay a rent that is killing us.  Plus as many know
Ferrets Etc. is the only rescue in the Denver Metro area and that has me
overwhelmed.  I recently went to the media again in hopes they would
help now, but got the same answer "Ferrets do not matter to us or the
public".
 
Well we are going to lose living hear soon.  In a nutshell, we found out
my 5 year old daughter had petie mal seizures (abcesnse epilepsy) back in
May and now we spend alot of time and money down at Childrens hospital.
She is very brave , she has to have lots of blood draws and they are
great there, they let her bring her one true thing of comfort with her,
her ferret named snowbell.  You add that on to my sons medical problems
with his belly and allegries and my car accident 3 years ago I am still
fighting on and in need of a sixth shoulder surgery it is medical bill
hadies here.
 
Well I knew Christmas would be bad for my children and ferrets alike this
year and have been trying to deal with it.  Between our rent and the
raise in heating costs I can not make ends meet.  And guess what my
husbands job tells him right before Christmas they are closing the
store, he will not have a job as of Jan. 28th.  Merry Christmas to us!!
We pray and hope you will he can go to a new store, but HomeDepot does
not guarentee spots for everyone.
 
Well at this point I am pleading again for help, this time asking people
to hit the Colorado media with emails asking them to do a stroy on us.
Maybe some wealthy person out there would like to help us save our home,
the ferrets home.  I have done this 13 years by myself but can not
anymore.  I am afraid I will be homeless soon and what will becaome of
the ferrets?  It is so scary.  And my beutiful children who I love so
much and who love the ferrets so much.  I am non profit with the state
but not federal.  I never have found anyone to help me with how to do
that or with the $250.00 it takes to get that status.
 
My dream has always been to get a huge lot of land and open the only
sanctuary in COlorado for all animals, thats why I named my group Ferrets
Etc. the ETC> is for when I get the land and can save other animals.
But right now I would just love to save my home and my rescue.  Be able
to tell my children they have a home and not make the holidays any worse
for them.  I v even tried to convince my landlord to donate the house to
us but doubt that would happen.  See we own half the home, but he bbought
the part of the loan we defaulted on Ferretrs last year.  So if we do not
pay rent the home goes up for sale he gets the $150,000.00 owed to him
and we get athing left from the sale.  Anyway please spread the word.  My
mother even said try stars she heard on of the Hilton girls has ferrets.
SOunds silly but who knows, anyone have any celebrity addresses?? :-)
 
ALso I had to shut down my AOL account so our old email is gone until I
can gets things running again and I pray I do.  My mother let me start
a screen name under her account for now.  SO Ferrets Etc. is now at
[log in to unmask] I like it , it stands for ferret rescue.
 
Thank you to all who take a moment to listen.
Stephanie Sheme
[Posted in FML issue 5096]