Might also be useful to point out to e-bay that unless serious poisons are used regularly on skins or taxidermied items that dermestid beetles can take up residence (if things haven't changed in 20 years). It is miserable to have to deal with dermestids on a regular basis and having them in house results in serious problems. It's one reason that Victorians kept taxidermied pets under bell jars, that and to keep in the dusty poisons they used on the prepared pets. Dermesids eat flesh (including chomping on living people though they prefer dead anything, and the bites are nasty ones which have a tendency to become infected, too), fabric, paper, and loads of other things. Not fun things to work with during specimen prep for teaching collections. Yep. Shelters forever need adoptions, physical help with all the work entailed, donations, foster homes, donations of useful items like bedding and syringes, etc. I have had some friends (won't say who because it was in confidence but heard it at different times from two separate couples and two separate individuals with four separate shelters in four separate states) tell me that they put out a sum in the five figures of the their own money some years and otherwise never anything lower than a figure in the thousands, and knowing dozens of shelter operators have never heard of one with more than ten ferrets even breaking even (and many have 30, 50, or more), so obviously it's pretty well impossible to imagine a shelter making money. Those who are new to all this will be happy to know that periodically SOS (Save Our Shelters) runs summaries of the various shelters and tells how any of us can contact the treating vets to help alleviate some costs. [Posted in FML issue 3194]