I have posted about the clearly non-Marshall ferret that I was sold with a
Marshall guarantee before before, but Lisette has posted more than once in
the past week something along the lines of her post from yesterday, which
stated: "As I have read about the fake tatooing as an excuse for underage
ferrets with what feels like regularity over the years here-with never an
ounce of proof of this-and no one offering any now either...."  My story
does not fit this statement exactly, but what the implication seems to be
is that ferrets have NOT really been sold with Marshall papers when they
didn't come from Marshall.  Therefore, I'll tell it again.  I won't be
posting any "proof" pictures for reasons ranging from the fact that my
scanner has been kaput for nearly a year, to the fact that individual
pictures prove nothing because the reader/viewer has no way to know that
the items actually were connected, to feeling, however foolishly, a bit
out of sorts that I would need to do so to be found reasonably credible.
I do have the MF guarantee she came with, the distributor flyer, and could
take pictures of the tattoo.  I do not have pics of her tooth eruption
pattern, the stitches in her belly, her as a baby, or the receipt where I
bought her.  I might have a receipt from the vet noting that the stitches
were removed.  I have no recording of the calls made to and received from
Marshall Farms when I notified them that I had been sold a ferret with
their guarantee that did not appear to be one of their animals nor of the
discussion with the store owner.  So I can "prove" nothing, nor would a
single "proved" instance be evidence that a significant number of small
or underage kits existed in stores or came from non-Marshall sources
regardless of their paperwork anyway.
 
My ferret, Sierra, does not have tattoos that look something like the ones
Marshall uses.  She has a tattoo in one ear that looks something like a Y
or a T in a slightly greenish blue.  It is the only tattoo I have found on
her.  She still had stitches in her tummy from her spay.  Long ago healed
and fur grown over it spay-- I felt rather than saw them.  Non-dissolving
stitches.  They were removed (by my vet just in case there were signs of a
problem).  She was a medium silver color that has whitened over the years,
and this was before we saw variety in colors from Marshall much at all.
She was lean and very muscular.  She came with a Marshall guarantee card
just like one I'd seen with a ferret obtained from a store that store that
provided copies of their invoices as supposed proof of age and origin of
the ferret.  Sierra didn't come with such an invoice document, but she
DID have a flyer from a place I understand to have been a distributor
that supplied most of the petstores in the D/FW area.  I note that this
distributor does not appear on the list of distributors on the Marshall
website now.  The store owner told us that his ferrets came out of Canada.
Judging by the tooth eruption ages posted by Bob Church to the FHL last
summer, I would say that Sierra was around 7 weeks old when we bought her.
She was plump and very sassy, which is what drew my attention to her to
begin with.  She has been wonderfully healthy with the recent exception
of the appearance of a few mast cell tumors that need to come off.
 
All this is to say that it is indeed POSSIBLE that SOME
unhealthy/small/underage kits COULD be represented in some way as Marshall
Farms kits when they really came from other sources.
 
Debra in Fort Worth
[Posted in FML issue 3800]