To Sherry the hopeful prospective young ferret owner:
 
At the risk of being accused of being on your parents side again, I wanted
to stress to you that I've seen this situation before to the detriment of
several ferrets.  Wherein the parents of the young person really really
objected to their child getting a ferret, smell being a large factor, and
the young person begged and begged until the parents gave in.
 
Eventually because the parents really didn't want the ferret in the house
in the first place, the ferret was made to live outside in dangerous
conditions or in a garage where it got little ventilation, natural light or
care.  In several cases the parents refused to allow the ferret back inside
ever again.  Some of these ferrets ended up in shelters, some of these
ferrets were in very bad condition when rescued.  The children did of
course have the best of intentions, but when push came to shove their
parents word was law, and the parents unfortunately didn't care that the
ferret would suffer by making it live outside, exposed to the sun and rain.
Please take your parents to a shelter so that they can see what it is like
having a ferret in their house, and to see how much or actually how little
ferrets do smell when properly cared for.
 
Does this mean you shouldn't do as was suggested and volunteer at a shelter
and continue learning all you can about an animal that interests you?  Not
at all.  But please keep the ferret's health and safety above your own when
deciding if having one in your home right now is a good idea.
 
The answers to most of the other questions you posed can be found at
ferretcentral.org as several list members have mentioned, and looking
through the archives of this list is extremely helpful as well.  The
archives are easily found at:
http://listserv.cuny.edu/archives/ferret-search.html
I'm sure people on the list would also be very willing to point you toward
shelters in your area, or should there not be a shelter local to you, to a
reputable pet store that takes care of their ferrets instead, but this is
hard to do when you haven't mentioned the area or the state you live in.
 
Best of luck in your ongoing quest toward ferret ownership.
 
Robynn and the toothsome threesome
[Posted in FML issue 2971]