I saw a piece on CNN Headline News this morning about the effort to save the BFF. It was very informative, giving info about how they'd been thought extinct and then a colony was captured, and about the success breeding them. But unfortunately for domestic ferret owners, the piece emphazised the wildness of the BFF, showing the keeper quickly dropping in food bowls so he wouldn't get bitten, and showing off his scars from the times he wasn't fast enough. And they showed footage of BFFs killing prairie dogs, talking about how BFFs aren't released until they've proven in the 'half-way house' that they know how to kill. One of the program people appeared to say that three times as many ferrets survived if they went through the half-way house than if they didn't. Nowhere did they mention exactly what did happen during the other release! All in all, not a bad piece on BFFs, but I think it was harmful to ferret owners none the less: nowhere and at no time was there any mention of domestic ferrets and their differences from BFFs. From the view of an uneducated or inexperienced watcher, ferrets are wild creatures who kill and eat prairie dogs and bite humans. ...eliz [Posted in FML issue 1347]