I read Jean's post in yesterday's FML with some sense of disbelief that someone would be so malicious as to spread such ugly and blatently untrue rumours about Jean's shelter in Ohio. I never met the famed Phoenix, however I arrived at Jean's home and shelter only a matter of days after his passing. Yup, true, there are cages. There was even a little poop!! WOW. There were some ferrets still in cages, and others running around in their own rooms. Heavens, that doesn't seem like cruel, dirty, inhumane conditions to me. Hold on, what else was there? Oh, that's right. The food, yeah the food must've been bad or missing. Oh... wait, there was good food in all the bowls, actually there was water too. Hmmm... what else could there be? Come to think of it, I can't recall anything inhumans there. Wow, the ferrets were friendly, they were fat - if anything they looked too spoiled - if there is such a thing. No-one has a perfectly clean home, no place is 100% perfect 100% of the time. Well, except maybe TLE, now she could be different, I think she has a genie cleaning up after her ferrets or something <G> Other than that, the ONLY person whose conditions will be perfect ALL THE TIME is the person who either owns no pets, or whose only ferrets are stuffed ones. Face it, a ferret needs to poop, and unless you're running after each and every ferret with paper towels, or you have diapers on them, there's no way there isn't going to be *some* poop in a corner or a litter pan. Sure, there's going to be a little mess, a perfectly tidy room is an empty room, which in itself is cruelty since the ferrets would be bored half to death! From what I saw of Jean and the "conditions" at her shelter, I believe that anyone starting these kinds of rumours about her can be doing it solely to create trouble for her and ferret shelters as a whole, and definitely NOT working for the good of ferrets and their owners. Sam ------- For those ferrets and owners that need our help... visit Ferrets In Need! at http://www.ferretfans.net/ [Posted in FML issue 2700]