When I was a teenager, I was an avid Redwall reader, waiting each year
for the next book to come out (much like present day children and Harry
Potter.) There are many ferrets in all of his books, but Brian has
divided up his characters into "good" and "evil".  I read about it once
on the Redwall site, and I don't remember it entirely, but there were
reasons for putting each animal into each catagory.  Ferrets do fall into
into the evil catagory, solely on the basis of them being closely related
to the other "evil" animals (stoats, weasels etc.) Brian loves scrambling
words, notice Veil is evil.  The Outcast of Redwall is the only one (at
least the earlier ones, I haven't kept up in years) that actually starred
a ferret however.I think Brian's books are wonderful, even though ferrets
are "evil" in them.  He also noted that these animals are obviously NOT
pets, (like the stoats, weasels, foxes), and that in no way is he trying
to give domesticated ferrets a bad name.  If you read the first few
books, the main evil characters are cats (who we all know are also
domesticated pets), so he isn't just singling out poor ferrets.
 
-Kira
[Posted in FML issue 4447]