[2-part post combined]
 
How very interesting.  Roary, you hit on a lot of feelings that I used to
have.  Ironically, the names of your ferrets are the same names that have
found their way through here, and the stories you wrote are ones I have
already experienced, more than once.
 
I used to be the person who would make excuses for others.  I gave
humankind the benefit of the doubt.  As a waitress, when someone stiffed
me, I just told myself, this person works really hard, and never has
extra money, and just happened to have enough to take themselves out, but
not enough for the tip, it's okay, they deserve to eat out occasionally,
I don't really need that tip.
 
When a car cut me off on the freeway, I would just tell myself that they
have an emergency and need to get to where they were going as soon as
possible, it just puts me one car behind in the traffic, no big deal.
 
When it came to rescuing ferrets, I tried to find excuses for people, I
tried really hard, but when the story repeated itself over and over,
and I could tell who was lying and telling the truth before they even
started, that's when I started to become jaded.
 
What's worse, is that the restaurant I work at is in a casino, and the
person who stiffed me was out gambling when I got off work, so they
weren't broke, they just didn't appreciate my service and wanted to keep
the extra money for gambling.
 
And the person who cut me off, made a dangerous decision because they're
in a hurry, but it's not just a danger to them, but a danger to their
children in their car and all the children in all the other cars
surrounding them, but truly, I don't care about children, what bothers
me is they cut me off causing me to hit my breaks.
 
So the little old lady who's driving real slow, isn't she old enough to
know that she should move to the right lane where you're supposed to
drive slower?
 
And don't get me started on children, I have quite the opinion on
parenting.
 
During the time that I ran the shelter, I had many people tell me that
eventually I'll get tired of being a dumping ground.  I used to argue
with them, because I didn't want to believe them.
 
I'm not quitting, at least not in my mind.  I'm changing the direction
of my efforts.  I'm making it more difficult for people to dump their
problems onto someone else.  I'm going to continue educational events
and push the idea that we shouldn't buy from pet stores, every time you
do, you are supporting the terrible farms who practice unethical breeding
and altering habits.  Who also sell to fur farms and animal laboratory
testing, and every time you purchase a marshall product, you support
this.  Or triple F, or other big farm products.
 
I'm going to educate on the importance of taking your ferret to your vet,
and when someone calls because they have no money, I'll tell them to pawn
something, or to have a yard sale to help raise money for their wonderful
pet, and I'll gently remind them that when they purchased their pet, it
was for life, not just for the holidays, or whatever reason.
 
My new goal is not to rescue ferrets, but prevent ferrets from getting
into situations where they need rescuing.
 
I realize that most people won't care what I have to say, and most won't
listen, and perhaps the ferret should be taken out of the home it is in.
But when a shelter mom gets to a point where she feels euthanasia might
become necessary because of the over population of homeless ferrets, then
the shelter mom isn't helping those ferrets either, is she?
 
I am at that point.  I had so many ferrets here that I didn't know what
to do.  Foster homes were full, and all these ferrets needed adrenal
surgeries.  I constantly got phone calls from people who wanted baby
ferrets, under 6 months, and didn't want to pay full price for them.
Several times I offered a ferret for free and all their things including
a cage if they would just pay for the ferrets adrenal surgery.  Guess
how many took me up on the offer?  Two.
 
You might think that's great.  Except that one of those two came back to
the shelter 6 months later with out her surgery, and she ended up being
rushed in for emergency surgery only to not pull through, because we were
too late.  All my efforts for the little fuzzy dew failed.  I did a home
visit on her home and kept in constant touch with her new mommy, so what
went wrong?
 
The second is scheduled for surgery, and I'm hoping there's one happy
ending.
 
I was lucky enough to become part of a network were we were able to move
some ferrets to another shelter.  But as soon as those ferrets were gone,
more came in.  Had it not been for the ferrets that were transferred to
the Oregon Ferret shelter, I would not have been able to take in the last
batch.  What came out of this is why euthanasia of homeless animals is
necessary in our country.  Do any of you even know how many cats/dogs and
ferrets are euthanized on a monthly basis at your local animal shelter?
Maybe you should give them a call, because the numbers are beyond belief.
And yet, people are still breeding at home in hopes to make an extra
dollar.  Or the worst excuse I have ever heard, oh, I want them to
experience natural life and have puppies/kittens/whatever.  Yeah,
whatever.
 
Thankfully I have found homes for all the shelter ferrets that were here,
and now only have my personal ten left.  All ten of which were rescues.
The fact that I accept euthanasia now is still a shock to me, but I
understand it, and support it.  After all, where are all these animals
going to go?  Not here, I can't afford it anymore, I'm only a waitress
remember?  And my vet bill is still at over four grand.  And growing,
because there are still ferrets in foster homes.  I'm trying to figure
out how I'm going to pay for melatonin implants on my personal kids in
a week, all this money went towards shelter kids and what about my own?
 
And in reality, I don't care about the money, or the time and energy, I
didn't mind.  I don't care that my body aches and I'm developing a
constant headache.  That's no reasons to quit for me.  But the fact that
I can't get far away enough from society, because I HATE people.  I don't
do anything outside of my home anymore, because I don't want to deal with
people.  I deal with people at work, because I have to.  And I talk to
people at our educational events, because that's where my efforts are
going.  And we're still doing our third annual ferret frolic, but that's
part of education.  But I don't want to go anywhere that has people.
That's what I call jaded.
 
October
www.renoferrets.org
[Posted in FML issue 4929]