It's a Ferret Life

1999 rant against ferret lover coming back to haunt Giuliani

If Rudy Giuliani doesn't win the Republican nomination for president, he'll have only the ferrets to blame.

Audio recently surfaced of Giuliani verbally berating an activist who called up a weekly radio show the GOP candidate hosted while mayor of New York.

The activist wanted to protest Giuliani's work to keep ferrets illegal in New York City, where they are classified as wild animals and unlawful to keep as pets.

No sooner did the man stammer out his intentions than Giuliani launched into a tirade, by turns vicious and condescending:

"I think you have totally and absolutely misinterpreted the law, because there's something deranged about you. The excessive concern that you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist. Not with me. I'm not insulting you. I'm being honest with you. Maybe no one in your life has ever been honest with you. This conversation is over, David. Thank you. There is something really, really, very sad about you. You need help. You need somebody to help you. I know you feel insulted by that, but I'm being honest with you.

"This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness. I'm sorry. That's my opinion. You don't have to accept it. There are probably very few people who would be as honest with you about that. But you should go consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and have him help you with this excessive concern, how you are devoting your life to weasels."

I shook my head when I heard it again the other day, because you know, you just don't mess with the ferret people. Ferret people are organized. We have e-mail lists, newsletters, Web sites, a whole network of shelters and clubs and ways to communicate with one another -- developed in part because the pets are misunderstood and often mistreated.

And nobody makes fun of our pets but us. I might tell my own two furballs when they're misbehaving that they're vermin, but you'd better not say anything of the kind. Slight our pets and you risk our wrath.

Giuliani should have heeded the experience of actor Ben Stiller, who a couple of years ago appeared in a film called "Along Came Polly" with Jennifer Aniston and a ferret named Rodolfo. During the press tour, Stiller referred to the ferret as a "smelly rat" and said it bit him and his human co-stars and should be illegal to keep as a pet.

His derogatory remarks hit the ferret subset of the Internet, and the actor got what he said were "thousands" of e-mails telling him where to put his anti-furry bigotry. A picture of his face was pasted into a plastic ferret litterbox and put up for auction on Ebay; it fetched more than $200 for charity.

The uproar was so fierce Stiller had to go on the Today Show and hold a ferret, pet it, and apologize to it and all its vociferous fans.

The best part about the entire incident was that in the end, reviewers agreed that the much-maligned ferret carried the movie.

The ferret activists' outrage stemmed from the fact that Giuliani had refused to step in and change a city board of health directive making it illegal to keep ferrets -- who aren't rats, by the way, but are more closely related to polecats and other mustelid creatures -- because they were "dangerous wild animals naturally inclined to do harm," according to the board. The animals were legal in New York State, but no longer permitted within the city's five boroughs.

The list of banned animals also included badgers, pandas, giraffes and dolphins.

The ban, like a similar one that applies to the entire state of California, was and still is being contested by the large ferret constituency that insists the animals are not wild, nor are they dangerous.

Speaking for the two that live with me, I can say definitively that one is too dumb to survive in the wild and the other, actually an accomplished mouser when he wants to be, is simply too lazy, and the only real harm they do is hiding my shoes just before I have to go out. Of course, a mistreated or sick animal might cause a biting or health hazard, but the same is true for a dog, a pet no one has ever thought to banish from the city.

This is all in good fun, of course, except to say, if you don't understand that unnecessarily ridiculing a large, well-managed constituency isn't a bright move, maybe you're not quite ready to be president. Armchair psychology based on pet ownership isn't exactly one of the top qualifications for the job, and it can cause more trouble than it's worth.

I mean, imagine if Giuliani had said the same thing to cat owners.

Daily Southtown columnist Allison Hantschel may be reached via her blog, www.first-draft.com.