Hello,

Two things today: first, thank you to all the Santas who sent items to
Lane Area Ferret Shelter and Rescue. I truly appreciate how generous
our Santas were this year! Especially in light of the economy. The kids
are having the time of their lives and we received so much stuff, that
I had to put half of it away to save for later when the current stuff
wears out!

Second, here's some info I think you should know. I helped Kris with
the Giving Tree this year by creating some of the Snowflakes with
ferret's pictures on them, setting up a few trees, creating "bios"
pages some of the ferrets, and whatever else Kris asked me to do.

I know there were more people who helped (thank you all very much!),
but I think you should know how truly time consuming the whole thing
is to do. First, you have to collect all the information from the
shelters. There were a total of 621 ferrets posted to the trees. Next,
make the snowflakes for each ferret which means you have to size and
possibly cut down the image of the ferret's face, and paste the face
onto a snowflake. Build the bio pages. Take the snowflake and place it
on the tree, link the snowflake to the bio page, make sure you have all
the other trees listed at the bottom of the tree page to allow people
to surf to other trees. Then, try to coordinate various tasks among
several different people. And this is just the preliminary work to
getting the trees posted! After the trees are posted, Kris has to
gather all the information from the Santa form to figure out what
ferrets need stockings, then put the stockings up on the tree. This is
a pretty simplistic look at the entire process. In addition to this,
Kris and many of his helpers have full time jobs as well as possibly
running a shelter (like me)!

So, if Kris decides to to this again next year, please think about all
this and be patient while you wait for trees, stockings, bios,
snowflakes, etc. to be posted.

Kris does an incredibly good job with the resources he has. Helping
him out this year was a very eye-opening experience for me.

I hope everyone in the FML community has a wonderful New Year filled
with peace and joy.

Take care.
Melanee Ellis
Shelter Manager
Lane Area Ferret Shelter and Rescue
Eugene, Oregon
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See our adoptable ferrets at www.laneferrets.petfinder.org!
www.laneferrets.org
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[Posted in FML 6203]