Hello everyone, While I wholeheartedly agree that the unfortunate bite incident with Rocky hurts our legalization efforts and could well have been avoided, anyone that portrays our media as unbiased, and the failue to legalize ferrets here as simply due to the mistakes of legalization proponents, is absolutely innacurate. The California media in general has, and continues, to take the words of our two state agencies totally on faith. Never once has the media taken the time to investigate the veracity of the information coming from DFG or DHS. That ferrets are a threat to wildlife and people have been statements simply taken on face value. With very few exceptions, mostly from smaller papers, not a single reporter has bothered to dive beneath a very shallow look at this issue. A recent report about two infants attacked by a ferret in Orange County quoted our Public Health Veterinarian as saying "ferrets perceive infants as prey." It's difficult for unscientific remarks to get much more inflammatory than that. No comment was made about the fact that ferrets are legal in every other state on the continent, and virtually every other country in the world. Doesn't this beg any questions for an intelligent, unbiased reporter? Questions such as, "Why are ferrets legal virtually everywhere else? Why such a controversy in CA?" Anyone taking the time to investigate this last question would discover that the controversy, the difficulty is due to the lies by our Department of Fish and Game. And, based on the 800,000 dog bites each year that require medical attention, and the 16-20 deaths from dog bites, where is the question that askes if dogs percieve humans as prey? I don't know if the situation here is a case of a lazy press, or another example of the difficulties of overcoming a decade of ferret misinformation, but you have to ask yourself, what attention does a headline such as "Dog Bites Man" get when there's 800,000 of them each year? Now, "Man Bites Dog" is another matter and the rarity of a ferret bite requiring medical attention (the one in Orange county did, the one in San Diego required a band-aid) makes the kind of headline the media loves. I was very sorry to hear about the bite instance and I know that our efforts will pay some kind of price for it, and that is unfortunate. (I applaud all of those that put the nip in perspective and do not add to the hysteria, our Department of Health Services can be counted on to dish up enough hysteria over any ferret bite to go around.) Ferret enthusiasts in CA have made their share of mistakes, but it has been in an arena that was rigged against them from the day our Department of Fish and Game signed up the CA Department of Health Services, the CA Farm Bureau, CA Waterfowl, the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Planning and Conservation League and League of Conservation Voters, not to mention some at UC Davis to help them fight legalization. Ferret enthusiasts in California should be proud of their accomplishments in the last year. In spite of the powerful anti-ferret lobby, we won a 64-8 vote in the Assembly. The current bill, though blocked at this time by one Senator, is still alive, and a meeting has been called by one of the members of the Appropriations Committee which may signal some unexpected help. Ten or more members of the 13 member committee have stated that they will vote for the bill if it comes off the suspense file. Many of these members had stated at the outset that they did not support legalization, but the hard work and huge letter-writing campaign by so many ferret enthusiasts in CA is the reason most of these committee members have re-evaluated the situation. Let's keep up that kind of good work and try very hard not to add fuel to the hysterical fire our Health Department will surely do its best to keep burining. P.S. If anyone has a comment or suggestion to make to me directly, please e-mail [log in to unmask] since I no longer receive the FML. Thanks. Jeanne Carley Californians for Ferret Legalization (CFL) 410 Mountain Home Road Woodside, CA 94062 (415) 851-3750 <[log in to unmask]> http://www.ferretnews.org-- CFL Website CALIFORNIANS, YOU CAN FIND OUT YOUR STATE SENATOR BY VISITING THIS SITE!! CALL AND WRITE YOUR SENATOR AND GOV. WILSON--DON'T LET OUR BILL DIE! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For pure ferret fun, check out http://www.ferretcompany.com [Posted in FML issue 2177]