Good news. I talked with Joe Boteilho and Pat Sproule of Clark County Animal Control in Las Vegas regarding the ad in the Las Vegas paper. It turns out that, according to them, the ad in the Las Vegas paper greatly misconstrues the agenda of the upcoming meeting, that the ad was not posted by authority of their office (so just a random ad placed by someone), and that the office has no idea why anyone mentioned ferrets in the ad. The agenda of the meeting is to discuss a dangerous animal ordinance which addresses, after the fact, individual animals (not species as a whole) who have, through individual incidents, caused substantial harm to individuals, perhaps even more than once. One solution might be to require closer or more responsible keeping or confinement of such individual animals (I don't know whether it goes further). Joe welcomed people to attend. I hope one of us goes, if nothing else, to verify the purpose of the meeting. Joe says that his office does not believe in deeming species to be more or less fit for specific uses (such as pets); rather, they are dealing with individual animals and/or their owners that are causing a problem, and are returning lost animals to their owners. Their office seems ferret-friendly, and (casually) mentions they get the odd ferrets (and ferret cases?) in, but they don't have any big problems with ferrets. Their office keeps records on the circumstances of bite reports, believing this to be relevant to their task [yay!], such as whether the animal was a guard dog defending the property from a trespasser, or whether the animal was clearly provoked. Finally, there is apparently a Nevada Administrative Code state law on Communicable Diseases, chapter 441A, which says something about vaccinations, ordinances for rabies control, and licensing. This law talks specifically about dogs, cats, and *ferrets*. Apparently the Nevada State Law is to vaccinate all of these animals for rabies (Joe knew IMRAB-3 was available for ferrets). At some point his office may be discussing (and perhaps holding public meetings examining) rabies vaccination enforcement and tracking by requiring a license obtained after rabies vaccinations, but this would be for dogs and cats as well, and is apparently not intended by their office as a method to restrict pet ownership beyond vaccination concerns, since this is not their mission. To me there's an issue to examine of whether too much government here, and also whether ferrets are at high risk for rabies being indoor pets, but I didn't go off on those since that was not what I called about. The number is (702) 455-7710, and Joe said to call if you have questions (but try not to bother him lightly; he is not the enemy, apparently -- at least, his office is not peopled by ferret-haters singling ferrets out for attack). Todd Cromwell Dors (novia) and Seldon (cazador de suen~o) [Posted in FML issue 1219]