This is Edward at Ferrets NorthWest FNW in Seattle. As I am wont to do, I hold off reading the FML until 4 or 5 of them are downloaded and they then sit in my computer for a week or so before I read them. I've just read the last group and am delighted that I've stirred up various responses to my postings, some of them really full of invective and others that seem to be missing the points I've tried to make. I love them all, for they show the true nature of the poster and their "human-ness." Apparently I'm not getting through to everybody. That's to be expected in this world of sterotyping and PC (Political Correctness.) A long time ago I've learned that getting into someone's head can be maddeningly slow. Hopefully my most recent posting on DOMESTICATION & TAMING will focus more clearly my objective of bringing to the fore your concentration of thought on the ultimate destiny of our beloved Frettchen, some 20,000 years hence. (or possibly sooner through genetically engineered, multigenerational ferret cloning, the forerunner of which is the newly published "Honolulu technique.") I shall ask again, are we, the buyers of MF ferrets, actual accomplices in the potential extinction of the ferret? As the world changes about us, are we giving the ferret the opportunity to change to meet the new pressures that are impressed upon it? Are we suppressing "genetic drift?" You should agree with me: Yes, we are, as adopters of MF ferrets, or for that matter, adopters of ferrets that are not permitted to procreate, we are sounding the bell of doom for the ferret, the final gong being the woeful ring of extinction. Oh, what a wail of objection doth arise! They lament: but surely procreation will flood the land with hordes of whole, intact ferrets and the shelters will be flooded with unwanted urine marking, olfactory objectionables and aplastic anemic mortalized ferrets! Precisely true (up to a point) without a doubt. With so many objectionables, the numbers of owners of ferrets would anticipate decline and their numbers would diminish drastically. Exactly. And who is to say that it is not as it should be? Why not? However, those pioneers who remain truly faithful to the full recognizition of the whole ferret for what it really is and, more importantly, what it can be through selective breeding, will in the long run be instrumental in genetically pushing the ferret evolutionary to greater heights of development and inhibiting its current path down the road to ultimate destruction. To some this smacks of National Socialist Deutsche Worker's Party thought, often abbreviated: NAZI. Are we speaking of attempting to create a SUPER RACE? Absolutely we are; the more super the better. And what the hell is wrong with that? This was not an original thought with father Schickelgruber's little son, Adolf, though some think it was. See Plato, Galton, Malthus, Noyes, Engels, Mendel, Ploetz, Gottesman, Ruedin, and Mein Kampf. Menschen: you are loving the ferret to death. Some may feel that if you cannot accept the ferret for what it is and intimate with it "in the natural," then do you really deserve to hold this animal in your keep? In a sense, this philosophy mimics PAWS and PETA in their objections of keeping animals as pets, especially when humans require the maiming (early spay & neuter)of such pets with absolutely no concern whatsoever given to the short and long term effects of these maimings on the longevity and health of our cancer-ridden and drastically short-lived, commercially bred ferrets that are typical of MF. Edward, Der Wahrheitskaempe von Frettchenvergnuegenland dabei, Lipinski, der sagt: "Lebe wohl Frettchen!' Edward, the Champion of Truth from Ferret Joyland, Lipinski, who says: "Live a good life ferret!" [Posted in FML issue 2383]