I sent this letter to the editor of the Union Leader in Manchester, NH.
I don't know if they'll print it but it needs to be.
 
>>Letters to the Editor
Union Leader Corp.
100 William Loeb Drive
P.O. Box 9555
Manchester, NH 03108-9555
 
To Whom It May Concern:
Rosemary was not her name, but the only name we knew her by.  Rosemary was
the small, little ferret you abandoned in a Manchester park last week.  You,
whoever you are, decided that Rosemary was no longer "convenient" for you
too keep.  I can only hope, for Rosemary's sake, that the brief life she had
did hold some moments of happiness for her, because her last days were
filled with pain, despair and, finally, hopelessness.
 
You know who you are.  You took this innocent, trusting animal, locked her
in a cage without bedding, without protection from the rain and snow, and
left her in an out-of-the-way corner of the park where no one was likely to
find her.  Unable to escape her cage; unable to keep warm and dry, her food
gone, her water frozen; she slowly, hour by hour and day by day, began to
die, in pain and all alone.  Oh, she was found.  She was taken to the
Manchester Humane Society, barely alive.  (Of course, you might have done
that instead of abandoning her in the park to die, but then that might been
too inconvenient for you.)   The Humane Society called our halfway house.
They, in turn, rushed her to the Weare Animal Hospital where she was given
emergency treatment.  By then her body temperature was nearly 10 degrees
below normal because of exposure; she had no body fat remaining -- so thin
that the veterinarian could feel her organs through her skin.  She was
convulsing from dehydration, starvation and exposure.  Her brain was
shutting down.  She was already blind from lack of food.
 
The veterinarian and his staff worked for two days trying to get her body
temperature up to normal, get fluids inside her, get nourishment to her
organs.  Gradually the convulsions stopped.  Gradually her temperature
returned to normal.  For a day it seemed like she might beat all of the odds
you stacked against her.  In her weakened condition, however, she could not
sustain her fight to live.  She died this morning.
 
In his book "Inferno" Dante describes the very inner circle of Hell as a
frozen lake where the soles of the most damned writhe, frozen in the coldest
of ice, for the rest of eternity.  Rosemary did not deserve to live out her
last week of life in such a hell.  It is comforting to think, though, that
if Dante was right, perhaps there is an appropriate place for you.
 
Richard Bossart
4 Li'l Paws Ferret Shelter<<
 
Dick B.
[Posted in FML issue 2144]