Hi everyone, As Zen so eloquently put it yesterday, "Having a different point of view is not evil." Zen and MC (the Rude One) made some very valid points. These are based on common sense, a very rare thing these days. In suggesting that we should work WITH the petstores to help educate their employees and new ferret owners, M.C. is offering a very constructive method of actually accomplishing something instead of just making ourselves feel better with some politically correct garbage. Our Buddy (aka Chubbs) who, many will remember, was the starved fur-covered skeleton left in the snow at my friend's petstore door 15 months ago goes in to get his stitches removed tomorrow morning. He had both adrenal glands removed 2 weeks ago. The left one was the size of a golfball and the right one was the size of a small marble. For those who don't know, they are normally about half the size of a pencil eraser (if not smaller). We are very lucky to still have him with us. Our wonderful vet (Dr. Chuck Burmeister, Peoria, IL) spent 1 hour literally carving out the artery going to his kidney instead of just removing the kidney and spent a total of 3 hours doing this surgery. When asked, he commented that he'd not seen a larger tumor except in autopsies. My Marshall Farms questions for all you to think about is: 1. Since Buddy was born at MF, should I blame them for this illness? To do so would be to ignore the fact that his first humans starved him for his first nine months or so of life by feeding him cheap dog food and then Cheerio's when he stopped eating the dog food. 2. His cagemate died from heart failure due to malnutrition. She was also a MF ferret. Should I blame them for that death also? For those who don't get the point - those are rhetorical questions. I have ferrets who are MF and ferrets that aren't MF. I love them all. I consider them all gifts from a higher power and don't question the path used to send them to me. It seems to me that everyone jumps on the "bash" MF bandwagon with little or no evidence of "evil" deeds. Recently I read one poster who commented that they "assumed" MF sold the majority of their ferrets to labs instead of the public. Why would this person "assume" this? Why wouldn't they "assume" that MF would look at the very limited number of potential customers that research labs consist of versus the millions of potential customers the general public consists of and prefer millions instead of hundreds? Why would a "greedy" business choose the smaller customer base? Have we have allowed ourselves to become so politically correct that we don't even question the people who make statements bashing the "evil" MF? I welcome any intelligent arguments. For those who wish to "Flame" me, I suggest you do it privately. You really don't want to get into a public word war with me. Trust me on this. P.S. Thanks BIG for continuing the thankless job of moderating this sometimes frustrating list. Your patience is that of a saint. [Posted in FML issue 2960]