By DENISE BUFFA

February 13, 2006
New York Post

-- Maybe city health officials weren't barking up the wrong tree when they banned ferrets.

Seven years after a much-publicized fight over the animals, a Bronx mother has filed suit against some ferret owners, saying one of their two pets attacked her son on the street.

Wanda Luciano says two girls, Melanie and Melody Baez of The Bronx, were walking their ferrets on Zerega Avenue when one of the animals bit her son, Jon-Luc Luciano, on Oct. 13, 2004.

In a civil complaint filed in Bronx Supreme Court, Luciano charges that the girls harbored the "wild" and "ferocious" animals, which are "prone to vicious, unpredictable attacks on humans, particularly young children and infants."

The city Board of Health banned the possession of ferrets by private individuals in the city in 1999, saying the animals are known for aggressive, unprovoked attacks on kids.

That prompted ferret owners to bare their claws, arguing that their pets had been domesticated long before cats.

In 2001, the City Council voted to overturn the ban, but then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani vetoed the measure.

The fight continued, with ferret lovers filing suit against the city. But in 2002, a state Supreme Court justice upheld the health law prohibiting them as pets.

Since the ban went into effect, 67 ferret bites have been reported in the city, authorities said.

Neither Luciano nor her lawyer, Gloria Drelich, would comment on the suit.

Attempts to reach the Baez girls and their mom, Nivia Loubriel Baez, also named as a defendant, were unsuccessful.

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