Hundreds of thousands of illegal ferrets allegedly hiding
out in California
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Jennie Warren
“You are God to them”: Undercover Dusty
J. with fuzzies Ferret Faucet and Sparky. |
By Gendy
Alimurung
LA Weekly
March 11, 2009
The members of Ferrets Anonymous are breakfasting
at an IHOP in Laguna Niguel, grumbling about the illegality of their
favorite animal and raison d’être. “Chinchillas
are legal, why not ferrets?” asks one man, over a bite of pancake.
“You have to be careful who you invite over to your house, because
what if your neighbor gets mad at you and turns you in?” says
a woman named Anita H., who is known as the Duck Lady because she drives
to work with her duck in a laundry hamper in the front seat. This is
something she could never do with her ferrets, at least not in California
or Hawaii, the only two states where the animals are banned.
“Exactly,” seconds Lance M., the organization’s
president. “What’s so special about California anyway?
Do you see any devastation in California? No. Just the
bedroom in the
morning.” It is President M.’s first term and already he
is revolutionizing the way Ferrets Anonymous does business, what with
the redesigned logo and the pewter keychains, which he now hands out. “They
love shiny things,” says Lance. Whether he’s referring
to the humans or their ferrets is unclear.
Conversation hops back and forth between two tracks. Track one: People
are smitten by their ferrets. People whip out their cell phones to
scroll through snapshots of little Koko or Sparky or Riata. They flip
through copies of the newsletter called Paw Print, perusing
calls for submissions to its photo contest — categories include
Sleepy Furkids, Soupie Faces, Best Kisser, Ferret Disguises and Best
Interaction With Toys — and lecture announcements. At the upcoming
regional meet, one Dr. Freddie-Ann Hoffman will be speaking on “The
Fur Beneath Us, a Shared American Ferret Experience.”
In the community, you are either a proud “ferrent” (ferret
parent) or on the verge of becoming one. It’s a gusty, drizzly
day, the kind of weather that gives ferrets the sniffles. Several members
mill around in the parking lot before the meeting, looking wary.
“Do you have a fuzzy?” a woman named Dee asks me. Fuzzy
is code for ferret, as is “kid” or “boy” or “girl” or “dookers” or “furrito” or “fuzzbutt.” When
I tell her no, she nods and says, sagely, “Ah, you’re waiting.”
Another woman, Dusty J., pulls out her keychain. On it is a photo
of her ferret.
“Oh, they get into trouble,” adds Dee. “Turn your
back for two seconds, you better be prepared.”
Which leads to conversational track number two: People are worried
sick about their ferrets. They are frail little creatures, prone to
cancer, hormonal imbalances and being accidentally stepped on by their
owners. “I’ve never seen a live one up close yet,” one
new member offers.
“Oh, I have one that’s 8 and a half. She’s a bit
unsteady on her feet,” a man says.
“Have you checked her blood glucose?” asks Lance. “When
in doubt, stab a paw.” Lance is currently obsessed with a dwarf
ferret named Trinket. “She’s tiny, tiny, tiny.” He
pulls up her photo on his cell phone. “That’s Trinket.”
“That’s actual size,” says Dusty. “You are
god to them,” he adds and then clicks off Trinket’s photo. “You
decide when it begins and when it ends.”
Ferrets have an average lifespan of nine years. “That’s
the part that hurts the most,” Lance sighs. “Just when
you get to the point where you can’t live without them, that’s
when you have to learn how to. I have a little girl coughing and wheezing
at home.”
Many a ferret lover has been jolted awake in a cold sweat in the middle
of the night imagining the nightmare scenario of getting popped by
law enforcement. You check your wife, you check your kids, you check
your ferret, not necessarily in that order.
On this subject, Lance gets fired up: “Maybe the cop sees a
toy in the doorway” — a Wiggly Giggly ball or a FerreTrail
Fuzz-E-Funnel, perhaps — “and he says, hey, that’s
probable cause.”
“How many ferrets do you have?” someone across the table
asks Lance.
“I don’t have 14.”
Then Lance says he really admires the way Dusty keeps her animals.
To which Dusty says she acknowledges that there are many acceptable
ways of keeping pets, but she likes her way best.
She has two fuzzies, one boy and one girl. The boy sits on her chest
when she exercises. The girl popped into Dusty’s husband’s
home office one night. They live next to a golf course, and someone,
they later learned, dropped off the ferret in a backpack. “I
don’t know how she survived. There are coyotes, and foxes and
owls. Oh, god, owls.”
Still, the California ferret’s most menacing natural predator
is the Department of Fish and Game officer. When Ferrets Anonymous
members are in a grim mood, they talk, in hushed tones, about the officers
at agricultural-inspection stations along state borders who used to
strangle ferrets on the spot while horrified owners looked on.
There are, according to Dusty’s estimate, hundreds of thousands
of ferrets hiding out in California. One major obstacle to legalization
is that no one is willing to come forward to aggressively lobby for
it because they’ve got the contraband waiting in their living
room. In fact, the entire ferret experience at times seems like one
big, hairy Catch-22. The guy who founded Ferrets Anonymous spent 45
days in jail for owning a ferret and brandishing a kitchen knife at
the officers who showed up at his apartment with a search warrant.
Says Lance: “He was cooking! Of course he had a knife.”
“You get so disillusioned,” says Dusty. “It’s
hard to be proactive.” Afraid to leave her charges alone, she
hasn’t been on vacation outside the state for years. When she
and her husband travel, they stay in dog-friendly hotels and smuggle
their ferrets in at 2 a.m.
Just talking about the stress wears on them so much that half the
table gets up to smoke midway through the meal.
Misconceptions abound. Even people who own ferrets think it’s
illegal to get them treated by a vet. It’s not. Doctor-ferret
confidentiality applies. “The doctor is in no way, shape or form
allowed to disclose anything going on between you and your animal,” Lance
explains. Rescuing ferrets is illegal. Though in most ferret clubs,
there’s an unspoken understanding that you can call someone in
the group and she or he will come and help you if you get in trouble.
Before ferrets can enjoy the same rights as cats and dogs and parakeets,
an Environmental Impact Report must be conducted. “It’s
usually something done when you build a freeway. Now they want this
on a freaking ferret?” Lance says. He shakes his head. Doing
a report is cost prohibitive. Most enthusiasts spend their money on
vet bills. Ironically, some 26 percent of all ferret-merchandise sales
in the nation occur in California, which means that not only are people
in our state fond of ferrets, they are fond of accessorizing them.
Ferret owners are used to irony. They have fallen for an inherently
comical animal, after all, a kielbasa sausage with fur. It has the
body of a weasel, the face of a teddy bear, and a cheerful, smiling
expression punctuated by tiny vampire fangs. Its main purpose in life
is to be cute, get into trouble and catch colds. Its historical purpose
has been to serve as a lab animal. The Pepcid AC antacid gobbled by
stressed-out ferret owners was developed with the use of ferrets, which
are prone to acid reflux.
The reasons why they are illegal in California include the fear that
they will form feral packs bent on ravaging crops and livestock. The
members of Ferrets Anonymous refute this argument. The original classification
of ferrets as wild animals, they insist, is a case of mistaken identity
in which the domestic ferret Mustela putorius furo was confused
with the black-footed ferret Mustela nigripes.
“There’s got to be someone here who stands in the balance
for ferrets,” says Lance when asked what keeps him from just
packing the hell up and moving to Nevada.
A few days later, a lanky, bleary-eyed woman, Sue,
is giving up her ferrets, Dububba and Whiteboy, to someone she met
through the online ferret black market. They are rendezvousing in neutral
territory. Namely, the office of an Orange County vet who specializes
in exotic animals. As Lance says, “Inside the vet’s office,
it’s Switzerland. Outside, it’s Iraq.”
The Yahoo! Groups Web board, where ferrets connect with humans who
desire them, opens with a disclaimer: “Enter and post at your
own risk. Fish & Game may be lurking.” Nevertheless, it is
where you go if you are “looking for a new ‘masked bandit’ to
love” or “looking for a carpet-shark or two in Long Beach.” All
the posts are poignant. Some read almost like poetry: “Too quiet
without little scuffing feet. I grew up with ferrets. Want.”
Sue can’t afford to keep hers. One squishes into her jacket.
She kisses its nose, and grudgingly hands the creature to the stranger’s
waiting arms. “Goodbye, my loves,” she says, then goes
to bawl in the parking lot.
For more on the effort to legalize ferrets in California, go to www.ferretsanonymous.org.
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