Dear Ferret Folks-
 
I got back from the BFF Forum on monday, and it's taken me this long to
rest and get back on my feet but I want to take this opportunity to tell
you what it felt like to look a species in the eye, one that our kind has
decimated, and brought back from the edge of extinction only with the
most concerted, the most valiant effort.
 
I grew up (yes, I did grow up!  Even though it doesn't show.) reading
all of the "Little House on the Prarie" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
She wrote about the prarie as a living thing....the fragrant stands of
swaying grasses rippling in the wind, the masses of wild flowers, the
sound of countless geese calling to one another as they fly south at the
end of another golden summer...The prarie is a vanishing world, and one
of America's greatest national treasures.  And we have treated it so
very badly, with so little consideration or reverence.
 
I could cry, imagining a world in which the bandy-legged little black
footed ferret never again creeps through the dry grass...sniffing for
prarie dogs.  A world in which bright-eyed, fat brown prarie dogs no
longer nibble green shoots and smooth their fur down with clever,
delicate paws.  We came so...very....close...to letting our children
inherit a world without these wonders.
 
I went to the IFC sponsored Forum in Louisville, Kentucky last weekend,
and I watched a mama black footed ferret on closed circuit TV, gathering
her three kits together and holding them to the warmth of her body.  I
saw the adults pop out of their nesting boxes in the breeding facility,
and stare at the strange hoomins on the other side of the plate glass
observation window.  I looked them in the eye, I did not flinch, even
knowing that *every* black footed ferret alive in the world today can
trace its ancestry back to a tiny group of rescued individuals- a group
so small that they would have fit easily into a single cat carrier.
*That's* how close we came to losing them forever.
 
I met their curious gaze and I didn't flinch, even knowing that my kind
was responsible for their near extinction.  I could have been ashamed,
but I was not.  Because the sucessful breeding program at the Louisville
Zoo, and in other places is proof positive to me that my kind has not
yet suffered from the complete extinction of the soul.  We're *fighting*,
fighting to put the black footed ferret back on the prarie where he
belongs, out where the sun will shine down on him and make his back fur
hot to the touch.  And we are succeeding.  He is *part* of our soul, the
way the prarie is part of America.  Our history, our life's blood.  If
we'd lost this beautiful little creature with his dark eyes, his sleek
muscular body and butterscotch coat, we'd have lost an irretrievable part
of ourselves.  It's that simple.
 
Do we win all of these battles?  No, we don't.  We won't.  In this
century we're going to see the end of so very many species in the wild.
Who will be first?  Will it be the rhino?  The mountain gorilla?  The
orangutan?  I'm resigned to it, it horrifies and shames me.  But when I
think of what I saw this weekend....when I reflect upon the fact that
through the conservation efforts of utterly determined individuals there
are now *several* breeding colonies of black footed ferrets in the wild
and more anticipated in the future...I feel like maybe my kind is worth
saving.  We haven't allowed the best part of us to die yet.  Maybe the
black footed ferret, re-introduced to the prarie, is saving *us*.
 
If you have an opportunity to attend one of these Forums in the future
I urge you to take it.  I found the experience deeply moving,
unforgettable.  It taught me things about myself, how I see my kind
relative to the natural world that we seem so hell-bent on rendering
sterile and lifeless for short term profit, for convenience.  I feel a
bit less helpless to stop the destruction.  I feel a bit more hopefull
about the future.  And somewhere....beneath a full, bone-white prarie
moon and a star spangled sky, the black footed ferret stalks his prey,
and the broken circle of life is healed, and restored.  And we are
redeemed.
 
Many thanks to the folks at the IFC for making the experience possible.
 
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 5225]