First, I wanted to say that I saw the story and pictures of Maria, the
little girl who was bald and burnt, and even in her initial pictures, she
still looks beautiful to me.  However, I am so glad to hear that she is
doing so well now.  I have some older sick and silly looking ferrets in
my household and love them just the same, and this sweet little Maria has
touched my heart as well.
 
Also, I was going through my file cabinet and found a book I had bought
about 5 years ago which had a ferret on the cover.  That's why I bought it.
It's called "The Outcast of Redwall" by Brian Jacques (written in England),
and it has a green cover with a ferret peeking through the bushes.  As I
started reading the book, which reminded me of a Hobbit/Lord of the Rings
style of writing, it became evident that ferrets were the bad guys in the
book.  Sneaky, dishonest, etc.  I stopped reading the book after the first
chapter and threw it in the file cabinet in anger.  I had forgotten about
it until the other day when I was looking for something.  I skimmed through
the book a little more and saw that the mother and father ferret had a baby
ferret and the mother died right after childbirth and the father abandoned
the ferret baby.  A mother pig adopted the ferret and raised him as her
own.  The ferret grew up to be a warrior just like his father (who I guess
was found and he was a bad guy), and there was a question of whether the
son of the ferret was going to be a good or a bad guy, etc.  The poor
junior ferret is killed in battle towards the end of the book.  I know
that since I only skimmed through the book, I probably may have missed
some major parts of the story though.  Has anyone every read or heard of
this book?  I'm just curious.
[Posted in FML issue 3499]