Might also be useful to point out to e-bay that unless serious poisons are
used regularly on skins or taxidermied items that dermestid beetles can
take up residence (if things haven't changed in 20 years).  It is miserable
to have to deal with dermestids on a regular basis and having them in
house results in serious problems.  It's one reason that Victorians kept
taxidermied pets under bell jars, that and to keep in the dusty poisons
they used on the prepared pets.  Dermesids eat flesh (including chomping
on living people though they prefer dead anything, and the bites are nasty
ones which have a tendency to become infected, too), fabric, paper, and
loads of other things.  Not fun things to work with during specimen prep
for teaching collections.
 
Yep.  Shelters forever need adoptions, physical help with all the work
entailed, donations, foster homes, donations of useful items like bedding
and syringes, etc.  I have had some friends (won't say who because it was
in confidence but heard it at different times from two separate couples and
two separate individuals with four separate shelters in four separate
states) tell me that they put out a sum in the five figures of the their
own money some years and otherwise never anything lower than a figure in
the thousands, and knowing dozens of shelter operators have never heard
of one with more than ten ferrets even breaking even (and many have 30, 50,
or more), so obviously it's pretty well impossible to imagine a shelter
making money.  Those who are new to all this will be happy to know that
periodically SOS (Save Our Shelters) runs summaries of the various shelters
and tells how any of us can contact the treating vets to help alleviate
some costs.
[Posted in FML issue 3194]