>I was curious... how many states catorgorize ferrets as wild or exotic. >And if a state is correct in their label of ferrets, then can a city... >then go against that and label them differently? How do state fish and >game departments fit into all this if and when they do? Is there a >place where I can look this up for each state or something? How hard >is it to change such incorrect labels when they are found (such as on >a state, and then an insurance level)? > >I'm not an activist, I'm just trying to learn and be better informed. > >Wolfy In NJ I know there are separate categories for exotic pets that are considered pets and those which are not considered pets. In fact, a few years back in Jersey City one of their beaurocrats read that wrong and the head of FG&W here and the state public health veterinarian from the health dept. were BOTH willing to testify FOR the ferret and her person. Sometimes the designations are connected to permit monies. In NJ when Paul Kalka was the head of the FG&W he was talking about maybe recommending switching ferrets to the agency that handles dog and cat licensing when the rabies viral shedding studies were done (The assorted studies took a number of years through the CDC, U GA, a rabies study lab in the Kansas university system, etc.). Anyway, at that point, FG&W actually had decent funding. They weren't rolling in money but they were badly shortchanged, either. Unfortunately, during Christy Whitman's few years as governor the state went into debt hugely and the the funding to the FG&W (and a number of other agencies) was badly impaired. At this point, FG&W really does need the permit money because NJ is still climbing out from the debt run up in the CW years. Heck, some of its wildlife protection work has been partly funded by contributions since those years; we were among those many folks who gave when we were able to do so. So, what we have is an agency which has a good deal of influence in terms of their expertise and which is a friend to ferrets which categorizes them as an exotic pet species and is willing to testify in court if a locale goes against ferrets. It would not be a good time to try to change that status, but it may be possible to do so once the funding for such agencies is once again secure, which means climbing out from the economic pit that was dug, first. (Yes, this is the same CW who is underfire for badly damaging environmental protection as the current head of EPA as a Bush appointee.) Anyway, sometimes it pays to figure out what can influence funding and other nuances and then to put effort into things that won't cause rifts, and to tackle some other things later. So, it could very possibly make sense to tackle age of sale and hoarding here now, and leave the category for later when that effort won't undermine useful support for ferrets. Gee, I wasn't exhausted yesterday, was I? I'm climbing out from under an infection, and I had an allergy shot and those do exhaust me. The site is NOT Joyce's I attached the sentence mentioning the hunting at the wfu site to the wrong paragraph when was directed to it! Arrrggghhhh. On top of that I lost part of a sentence. Hey, not tired or anything... (LOL!) >Personally, when a town had to be fought here Joyce's (Dr. Beer) page >on ferret art history was VERY important because it had so many old >paintings of people snuggling up to ferrets. Wish I hadn't lost her >URL. It also showed the tamer sides of hunting with them which the site >http://home.worldonline.nl/~wfu/ferret.html >also showed nicely so I was glad to find that one due to folks' >suggestions and to also find that they have >http://home.worldonline.nl/~wfu/drawings.html >which has some (perhaps about half?) of the same art work that she >displayed, plus one I haven't seen used before . [Posted in FML issue 3963]