>From: Melissa Litwicki <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Food / Potpie >Potpie's ears are crooked too. Hard part about "judging" ferrets is those that hold their heads funny even if they aren't lopsided. One reason the AFA works hard at training their judges for over a year is to let them get experience seeing things like this. But you know as well as anyone that all crooked ears mean is that they aren't perfectly matched. Doesn't mean much except for silly strips of cloth. Some of my favorite ferrets are far less show worthy then just having crooked ears. But I'd bet its "lake effect" rather than "gravity". <g> >From: Ferret Rescue of Tidewater <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: feral ferrets;shelters;depo provera >As far as the shelter situation, I can tell ya'll this: there are more >ferrets out there this year than last year. Some of that is from one of the three rescues I know of in your area closing when the family moved to another part of the state. This has been pretty much the situation in all of Tidewater and Northern Virginia. But at least soon we'll have a "new" shelter opening in the upper Shenandoah Valley area. >From: Al Gearhart <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: KAKA land, Vit A, shelters, bumper stickers... Quoting us... >>So this still boils down to the fact that we we have a distribution problem >>with ferrets not a overpopulation problem. >Fact!?! So how do we solve this problem? Part of the problem is that the >fml makes up a small part of the ferret owning poplulation. How many of >the shelters on those listings are monitoring the fml? There are some problems with no "permanent" solutions. You've mentioned that the FML is a small part of the population. Most shelters are not on the FML. Some of the shelters belong to one of the national ferret organizations/groups or one of the larger independent clubs such as the Baltimore Ferret Club, Great Lakes Ferret Association and Greater Chicago Ferret Association. Others are stubbornly independant. We've actually "stumbled across" ferret shelters that nobody's heard of and they don't know about any of the groups. This independance trait of ferret folk is a well noted phenomenon - partially why we are attracted to a less than mainstream pet perhaps. We recognize that mainstream isn't necessarily the same as quality. The shelters we consider the best in the country are not on this list very much but are kept up to date mostly through us. Some of them are just too busy to consistantly read the FML. These are the 100+ ferrets per year shelters that spend any remaining time at the various shows helping redistribute homeless ferrets. For an organized ferret relocation to work though it will have to become more a big picture than a small picture effort. It will mean more of shelters and halfway houses taking numbers of ferrets rather than individuals specifically picking up ferrets from shelters on the other side of the country. We've got shelters here in Virginia taking in over a dozen ferrets in a week which does not afford the luxury of individually placing them through the net. But we are more than willing to work on ways to help with this. We have to avoid the situations where the less adoptable ferrets are the ones sent to other shelters while still trying to even the load. We are willing to "web host" a "database" for which shelters have surpluses and which have shortages. Hate the impersonality that this imparts but a big job is a big job. >From: Jim Young <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Reply to Bob A couple of minor points. Both you and Bob do appear more fact oriented than many who speak. I consider myself an extreme environmentalist. I can point out examples of introduced species of plants and animals damaging the local forests. If I had any belief that ferrets would have a even slightly noticible impact on the wilds of California I would not be a strong proponent of legalization. >The point of "Legalise it ?" was that you should be aware of all negative >implications before allowing a species to be introduced into the urban or >rural environment. Since this is not an introduction but more of a desire to legalize the actual situation it does impact your arguments. Ferrets have been in California for decades (I can not ascertain centuries though). Ferrets were legal and present but are now illegal and present. They are not now nor were they earlier a presence in the wild. >I was interested to read that you had found a dead one 3 km from a town >though. Very probably abandoned by an owner who thought it would survive (or didn't care). Bob can you post the normal range of an individual polecat in the wild? See posting in the same digest from Lisa Leidig of Ferret Rescue of Tidewater for more on that. One specimen of unknown origin is hard to use either way. One side says "look a ferret in the wild" while the other says "but it obviously didn't survive". I'd tend to lean in this case strongly to the "couldn't survive" but have a hard time seeing this as proof either way. bill and diane killian zen and the art of ferrets http://www.zenferret.com/ mailto:[log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 1755]