Anonymous: Actually, our experience is that if ferrets are trained with times out (instead of physical punishment) when bad and tons of attention when good that bites almost never happen and most never bite after kithood. (We've had hard to train ones for about 2 decades -- badly abused ones, ill ones, ones with deformities, etc.) Why we get upset: 1. because historically every case is blown up by the anti-ferret activists till it sounds like there are 50 separate cases being discussed. The press used to do this, too, since ferret bite stories when the bite is serious are unusual, but over time they have learned a lot more and many have been using common sense, realizing that the exaggerations which result hurt many of their readers/veiwers/listeners. 2. because after all of the years that it took to get the needed research done to change the _Compendium of Animal Rabies Control and Prevention_, and all of the work it took to spread the information around, there STILL are some physicians and animal control people who actually think that there isn't an effective USDA approved rabies vaccine for ferrets (IMRAB 3 for well over a decade), or who think that ferrets are rabies vectors (when there are no cases world-wide of anyone ever anywhere getting rabies from a ferret), and who press for needless killing of the ferrets. Did you know that over $5,000 was spent by one FML member alone making key people in the 50 states were aware of the changes when the CDC research on rabies viral shedding was completed in ferrets and the Compendium was changed? (Believe it or not, not all state public health vets knew that in 1998.) Did you know that a large number of people and clubs here on the FML have been careful over the last 5 years to get http://www.avma.org/pubhlth/rabcont.asp The Compendium of Animal Rabies Control and http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/rabies/Ques&Ans/q&a.htm Easy to read rabies Q&A to hospitals, physicians and animal control people? Many still do that on a regular basis. If you haven't, then it's a good time to begin so that your area's health and AC people are educated. Lack of education and misunderstanding often have caused anti-ferret laws to be pressed or even passed in communities. It is by fighting these problems that those efforts have been successful. BUT, it is EASIER by far to AVOID the problems by derailing bad press early on than it is to challenge proposed legislation, so it is just a smart way to work. That help? [Posted in FML issue 4369]