Q: "You don't answer much of your email anymore. Are you angry?..."
 
A: Just another angry young fert.
 
I simply get too much to answer anymore.  It not just the number of emails
(sometimes a hundred a day), but also the amount of *LIFE* I have to invest
in that day.  Absolutely nothing comes before my kids and ferrets, followed
closely by school and work.  That just doesn't leave a lot of time to do
much of anything, much less read and answer tons of email.  I feel an
obligation to give back to the ferret community some of what has been given
to me, so I try to give a priority to the q-n-a thing, but even that would
suffer if I didn't write them on a laptop during "down-time," like when
watching TV or waiting in doctor offices.  Lately, I've been working on my
degree 18-20 hours a day, and in the next few weeks I will be deeply tied
up with SEM photography and microanalysis work.  I'll be making
appointments to go to the bathroom.
 
The bottom line is, I read and answer what I can, when I can.  I believe my
friends understand the problem and cut me some slack if I don't answer in a
timely fashion.  I do feel bad about it, but I can't apologize for having a
rich and fullfilling life outside of ferrets.
 
Q:"I have noticed lately people refurring to you as "erudite" and "the
walking encylopedia" as more of an insult than anything.  Does it bother
you?"
 
A: No, but refurring might. Sounds like it might hurt worse than waxing.
 
Q:"Which is your favorite ferret?"
 
A: The one in my pants. The old jeans on the floor, silly.
 
I love tham all, but I guess it depends on who needs me the most that day.
I have been spending a lot of time with Sam-Luc lately, who loves to sleep
on my lap while I bird watch out my window.  I also have been spending a
lot of time with Sandy, who has started to bite hard on occasion, probably
because of her deteriorating health--perhaps her cancer has influenced her
hormonal levels.  But in reality, I love tham all about equally.
 
Q:"Would you comment on your favorite ferret book?"
 
A: No.
 
I have only commented about Bowtie's book because of the altered
"chicken-photo." Other than that, even with mistakes, I feel they do more
good than harm, even the older, out of date books, so I do not comment on
them in public.  I have thought sometime I should go through my library and
rate them all, but don't currently have the time.
 
Q:"Your comments on the Egyptian ferrets was rather sharp.  Don't you think
it could be a possibility, and books mentioning them are only offerring an
alternative point of view?"
 
A: Sorry, but no off-buttons to intelligence.  Ok, maybe a few for
computers and hard-drives, but none connected to this subject.
 
There is a big difference between not knowing something and mentioning it
as a possibility, and knowing something but still mentioning the disproven
as if it could be a possibility.  In this single instance, (ferrets
domesticated in Egypt before cats), the evidence is absolutely overwealming
that they were not, and there is not a single fragment of subtantive
evidence they were.  It is a myth that does damage to our reputation and
credibility, and it is both untruthful and unethical to insist on it as if
it were proven or even a slight possiblity.
 
Look at it this way.  One way of figuring out where domestication took
place is to figure out where it DID NOT take place.  In the ferret, we can
eliminate the New World, Africa, the Pacific islands, most of Asia, Britain
and parts of Europe simply because European polecats do not live in those
areas.  Kurten suggests polecats were present in Pleistocene deposits in
northern Palestine, but is only a single case, plus a 10,000-20,000 year
old deposit is vastly different from a 2,500 year deposit, the time frame
of ferret domestication.  They weren't there *THEN* and that's what is
important.  That basically leaves the area between the Eurasian steppes to
Spain, and northern Europe to the north Mediterranean.  Because of a nearly
complete lack of archaeological evidence, we must rely on the assumption
that animals are domesticated where they exist as natural wild animals,
such as the turkey in sw USA, goat and sheep in the Holy Lands, cattle in
Europe, llamas in S.  American, and so forth.  Since we basically know the
distribution of the European polecat before current population declines,
this limits the location of domestication to that of Europe.  I feel--sans
archaeological evidence--there are two very good possiblities as to
location of domestication; either in Spain or in eastern Europe.  I think
Strabo's Libyan reference is an important clue to the involvement of the
Phoenicans in the trade and dissimination of the ferret, but the
domestication was elsewhere.
 
Now, the difference between my kind of conjecture--that ferrets were
domesticated in Europe and traded down into the Mediterranean--is that *MY*
conjecture hasn't been disproven.  Occam's Razor, or the law of parsimony,
states the simplest explanation is generally the correct one.  To believe
the ferret was domesticated in Egypt requires one to ignore vast numbers of
animal mummies, recovered animal bones, heiroglyphs and historical accounts
which do not support the idea.  So while I can't tell you *WHERE* the
ferret was domesticated, I *CAN* tell you where it was not.  It was not
domesticated in Egypt before the cat.  Get over it.
 
Bob C and 20 Mo' Erudite Carpetsharks
[Posted in FML issue 2551]