Erika, very good point indeed. I am not a supporter of Marshall Farms by any stretch of the imagination, and by not buying their products, not only do I keep my dollars out of that particular wallet, but I also provide higher quality toys, food, etc. to my ferrets. Works out well, don't you think? :-) The point of my post was not to support MF, though it also wasn't to bad-mouth them. My post was to point out that the baby ferrets produced by this company can't be thrown into the same catagory as the accesories and other products, and for one simple reason. They are living, breathing, loving animals. The moment that any anti-MF activist allows these creatures to become statistics is the very moment their struggle becomes hypocrisy. If we boycott the products, and work towards making animal testing **for other than legitimate medical purposes** less prevalent, or practical, then MF will have less money to work with, and so will be able to produce fewer ferrets. If we work toward educating potential ferret owners everywhere, letting them know they have more options than a pet store, making sure that they are aware of the care requirements, etc., we will go far in cutting down on the number of ferrets sold by pet stores. Currently, MF does not have enough ferrets to meet the demand, so they produce at high rates, send kits too early, we all have heard these stories from various sources. Well, if we could turn even a small percentage of potential owners to shelter ferrets, we could curb MF's production without the potential of kits abandoned at the pet store level, as I discussed. No matter how we may hate the alleged shortcomings of MF, no matter how much some of us would like to put them out of business all together, we must accept the fact that they ARE in fact in business. And one of their businesses is making businesses. (Pun intended.) Until some point in the future where MF decides, for some reason, to quit breeding ferrets, we MUST acknowledge that they DO, and that these ferrets are just as deserving, and just as needy of our love as any other breeder's ferrets. Becuase we don't like MF is no good reason to abandon these kits. As I discussed above, there are several options which would gradually curb the production demands, and who knows, eventually this might just do the trick. But I'd like to compare this to quiting smoking. Cold turkey works sometimes, but usually its best to do it in steps. Just my 2 cents. (If 2 cents were really 2 cents, Bill would be rich by now.) Melissa www.geocities.com/lostferrets [Posted in FML issue 3182]