>... When you ask the stores the birthday of such kits most of the stores >do not have any ideal when the Kit was born. They can only tell you when >it was shipped to them. This is utterly apalling! I'm all for nailing these idiots to the wall. In addition, though, as ferrets become increasingly popular pets, every effort needs to be made to education the people who are buying these kits so consumers will stay away from obviously very young kits. If pet stores buy kits who die on them before they can be sold, something might finally be done. Money talks. *sigh* On that note, I also wanted to point out that here in Lincoln (Nebraska), there is a chain of stores called Pet Ark, and I've always been very happy with the way they treat their kits. In my experience they tend to buy from smaller breeders, and they've always known the *exact* date of birth for all their fuzzies. In fact, when we got our wild pair (Xena and Gabrielle), they actually had a *sign* up stating the litter's birthdate! On another positive note, the local paper here recently printed a *very* positive and surprisingly informed article about ferrets, including some very cute pictures. <g> They even printed Chris and Shelly Knudsen's shelter's contact info at the end! -Tasha and the gang of far too many... <g> [Posted in FML issue 2584]