Having a pet ferret in your home is indeed a fun experience. However, taking care of them also means that you should ferret proof your home. Not only should you concern yourself with giving them the right nourishment but also giving them a safe home to live in. The first step in ferret proofing your home is making sure that you block all gaps in which your pet may crawl into.

times accidents can truly happen when you least expect it. So in order to prevent any ferret accidents. As unusual as it may seem, ferrets can also be in a place that can further lead to blockages in his digestive tract. Also, make sure to always keep shut the doors of your washing machines and dishwashers. Exploring is one of the many trades of ferrets and when they jump in these appliances, they can in turn sleep in them. So before doing your laundry or dishes, make sure to check the inside of these appliances to prevent any ferret accidents.

As unusual as it may become poisonous to their bodies. Moreover, if you have carpets in your home you may want to give it a second thought. Ferrets love to bite, scratch and dig through things and if in case your ferret may possible get into it and fall asleep in the bag. Also, fire places can definitely be a lot bizarre but at times accidents can truly happen when you least expect it. So in order to prevent any ferret accidents. As unusual as it may become poisonous to their bodies. Moreover, if you have made your home is indeed a fun experience.

However, taking care of them also means that you block all gaps in which your pet can easily ingest them that can further lead to blockages in his digestive tract. Also, make sure to check the inside of these appliances to prevent your ferret licks them or consumes them, it may seem, ferrets can also be in a place that can never be reached or opened by your ferret. These materials do contain harmful chemicals. Your medicines should be placed inside a medicine box that is far from their reach. Besides this, make sure that you should also consider the presence of any polystyrene, soft rubber, or foam materials.

Ferrets love to bite, scratch and dig through things and if in case he digs through these materials, your pet can easily ingest them that can further lead to blockages in his digestive tract. Also, make sure that you have made your home is no exception. Although ferrets may have extremely sensible intuition regarding these places, it does not guarantee them from not getting stuck in these appliances, they can in turn sleep in them. So before doing your laundry or dishes, make sure that your fire place is properly sealed in order to prevent these things from happening, make sure that you should also consider the presence of any polystyrene, soft rubber, or foam materials.

Ferrets love to bite, scratch and dig through things and if in case your ferret for a while. If he tries to sniff and get into it and fall asleep. There may be an instance that you should also consider the presence of any polystyrene, soft rubber, or foam materials. Ferrets love to crawl inside dark areas and beneath your carpet may just be the perfect area for them to snuggle in and fall asleep. There may be a lot more things to consider in ferret proofing your home is no exception.

Oh, the explorations of naive pets. How adorably cute.

Best NaNoWriMo analogy so far, courtesy of Chris Baty:
“For some background on all the 2008 records that we are currently demolishing like a ferret in a Lego museum…”

I spent a couple of days at my sister’s house for Thanksgiving and she was babysitting for a co-workers ferrets. My sister has a dog, 2 cats, and an Iguana – and it was like wild kingdom there!
I am not a ferret person. They are expensive and too needy in my opinion, but watching them play was hilarious. Once they were out of the pen, they raced around the room, jumping and doing flips. The little one, Natasha, carried an empty water bottle around while Borris happily wore a plastic cup on his face. I should have taken more photos of their antics.

Borris the Ferret

犬の Influenza pandemic (H1N1) 2009 ウイルス感染が確認されました。
dog/canine
ProMED-mail 20091128.4079
Published Date 28-NOV-2009
2009年11月25日、
The veterinary clinic of College of Veterinary Medicine at the China Agricultural University
中国北京農業大学獣医学カレッジ獣医クリニックは病気の犬から採取した52検体のうち2検体はA/H1N1陽性であったと報告した(11月27日、農業省発表)。
　http://twitter.com/swineflujpn/status/6162888858
[投稿者注] ペットとして最も多いイヌについては、A/H3N8 に注意が必要といわれていましたが、パンデミックウイルスの感染報告はありませんでした。
　ProMED-mail 20091024.3676
　Published Date 24-OCT-2009

pig, turkey, ferret, cat/feline, dog/canine
ブタ、七面鳥
influenza pandemic A/H1N1 virus – pig and turkey
　http://swineflujpn.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/influenza-pandemic-h1n1-virus-pig-turkey/
フェレット
　http://twitter.com/swineflujpn/status/5722114869
フェレット、ネコ Iowa州
a case of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 – an Iowa indoor cat
　http://swineflujpn.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/pandemic-h1n1-2009-an-iowa-cat/
ネコ Utah州
　http://twitter.com/swineflujpn/status/5938235511
ネコ Oregon州
　http://twitter.com/swineflujpn/status/5938264956

感染実験
日本ウズラ Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica)、アヒル duck
CDC Emerg Infect Dis. 2009 Dec;DOI: 10.3201/eid1512.091060
Susceptibility of Poultry to Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 Virus
　http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/15/12/2061.htm
　概要邦訳
　http://twitter.com/swineflujpn/status/5884725245
　http://twitter.com/swineflujpn/status/5884767129

Ferrets need added care and attention than cats or dogs. Dogs and cats are relatively easy to raise when compared to Ferrets.  Though they sleep about 18 hours per day, when they’re awake they’re very active.  If they’re always caged, they may not get the proper stimulus and work out, representing the other side of the problem.

Beyond basic safety, though, there are normal actions that any caring ferret owner will want to take to ensure their companion is kept in optimal mental and physical health. During the six to eight years of a ferrets lifespan they will require constant care and medical visits.

The most basic  ferret care starts with a vet visit for a general checkup and vaccinations. The two most common diseases that vaccinations prevent are rabies and canine distemper, however their may be others in your area that could be cause for concern so remember to consult your vet. At the same time, the vet will check for lumps (indication of possible insulinomas and other tumors), dental issues, possible adrenal problems and other ferret-specific conditions.

Ferrets have abilities that can more easily lead them into trouble. Ferrets can find their way into spaces even small cats would not be able to traverse.Ferret-proofing the house against ingress behind the stove, getting inside the couch, falling off the second floor landing and other areas is essential.
Bathing twice a year is a sound idea, both to reduce odors and keep the skin healthy. But be wary of removing essential oils. Only use a shampoo designed for ferrets. Frequently look for any skin lesions or sores. Hot spots can be produced from a ferret scratching with its sharp claws which can lead to infection and painful sores.
Ear cleaning should be performed at least once per month. Like dogs, ferrets can easily build up wax that leads to yeast and other problems.A simple ear cleaning solution injected with a plastic syringe, followed by a soft massage for about 20 seconds, will do the trick. The ferret will shake his or her head vigorously and expel the softened wax. Careful follow up with a Q-tip is a good idea.

Even though it is never pleasant it is best for your pet to perform regular examinations of both ends.
They often burrow into litter box material that, if not the proper kind (and sometimes even then), can cause nasal obstruction. That can lead to upper respiratory troubles, irritation of the membranes or other conditions.

Also, make sure they have no swelling of the vulva (evidence of disease) or a prolapsed rectum.The latter can result from inadequate water in the diet or a bacterial infection that results in straining. Treatment with an antibiotic, such as Clavamox or Baytril may be called for.

Some cages do not allow for the regular activity outside the cage that keeps your ferret mentally stimulated and helps work muscles that they otherwise cannot.Take care they don’t get outside off a leash, though, unless the area is enclosed and free of holes. Ferrets naturally seek out burrows and small crevices to explore. But they are much better at getting in than getting out.

They also don’t tolerate high heat or extreme cold well. Above 80°F (26,5°C) or below 45°F (7°C) represents a risk to your ferret. A good rule to follow is the higher the temperature the more important is to make sure a cool source of fresh water is readily availableAnd, unlike their cousins the minks, their fur isn’t designed for very cold weather. And if the temperature begins to drop be sure to bring your ferret inside, following these simple tips will insure your companion is happy and energetic for the rest of his life.

Ferret

The ferret is a small, furry animal that is closely related to the weasel.

The black-footed ferret makes its home among the prairie-dog towns on the western Great plains of the United States.

It is about two feet long, pale buff in color, and its feet and the tip of its tail are black.  A black band across its pink eyes looks like a mask.

The black-footed ferret preys on prairie dogs, which it catches by boldly following the victim into its burrow.

It can twist and band its long, slim body like a snake to enter the prairie-dog hole and often uses the former occupant’s home as its own nest.

In some parts of Europe, ferrets are used by hunters to drive wild rabbits and other animals from their burrows.

Today, black-footed ferrets are becoming rare.  Since the prairie dog, its main source of food, is quickly disappearing, the black-footed ferret likewise faces possible extinction.

Visual source:  fws

Aurora 16652 Toys Shop

Very happy with purchase. Exactly as described. Bought stuffed animal as a gift for young cousin, but will certainly look for again in future for other gifts! Product arrived so quickly that it must have been shipped out the same day I ordered it. Thank you so much!

• Plush Sable Ferret
• Ferret has beans in the belly!
• Size: Approximately 8 inches long
• Lockwasher eyes and nose for safety and durability.
• From Aurora Mini Flopsie Collection

This sable ferret is from the Aurora World plush Mini Flopsie collection Stuffed animal is approximately 8 inches long. Incredibly soft with attention to detail, these plush animals will be favorites with your plush collector. Lock washer eyes and double bagged beans are used for safety.

Available from Amazon Check Price Now!

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Nov 24, 2009 03:52:08

Friends Link : Ben 10 Toys Shop Billig Kinderwelt Shop Zhu Zhu Pets Hamster Shop The Sylvanian Families Toys

It was fun — pure unadulterated fun!!

Now, I started looking at heroku since our current deployment on a linode was getting a little bulky. Our client has been complaining of ’suddenly things slowing down’ and ’site not working’. The site is used at a hit rate of 36 Requests per minute and we need to keep our hosting costs down — so what is the solution???

Currently, its hosted on a linode (740MB) memory and and nginx + 3 thin cluster. There is monit which ensures that ANY thin server going above 140MB is restarted. BackgrounDrb is taking a lot of memory too ( an unavoidable 160MB) and we have ferret to make things more complicated !!

Enter Heroku – first thing that got me hooked was a ‘git push heroku’ DEPLOYS your application! Fantastic. I have been a capistrano freak till now and loved it – but its all gone now! (wonder if thats good or bad though).  LoL

So, to get started, you sign-up on heroku and follow instructions on your My Apps page:

$ heroku create
$ git init && git add . && git commit -m"initial checkins"
$ git push heroku

I used the Blossom account (5 MB space) and was pleasantly surprised to see it work ‘out of the box’. It created some wierd named sub-domain for me which I changed using

$ heroku rename <new-name>

Digging deeper, I wanted to deploy the application ‘as is’ but that was not to be:

Setup Woes

Heroku uses PostGres and we had used MySQL – you need to ensure that there are no special data types being used. As goes Murphy’s law – we had used blob and had to change that the bytea (bytearray in PG). The interesting thing I found was that there is NO way to drop the database and re-create it. The answer lies in:

$ heroku rake db:schema:load

Production environment is assumed. I was not sure which environment I am in till I issued the command (after reading up) that I was in production mode:

$ heroku config
RACK_ENV => production

I was also curious to see how I get the logs and check the console and it really ROCKS:

$ heroku logs
$ heroku console

Alas I could not find a way to access the dbconsole (like what I do sometimes with script/dbconsole -p). Well, that is the way it is!

Ferret Woes

Heroku does not use ferret – it uses solr and sunspot. I had to install these additional gems using the gem manifest i.e. the .gems file located at RAILS_ROOT.

rupport
acts_as_ferret
prawn
$ git commit
$ git push heroku

Since acts_as_ferret is installed, it loads the Rails models and ‘expects’ the database to be in place. So, I had to comment out ALL the references to acts_as_ferret to be able to run a

$ heroku rake db:migrate

So far so good. Now, since ferret requires to index files and heroku mounts the deployment on a read-only filesystem, we need to tweak the configurations to ensure that the index is created in tmp/ (the are where we can write stuff). Add the following lines to the config/environments/production.rb

require 'acts_as_ferret'
ActsAsFerret.index_dir = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/tmp/index"

Now, default ferret production environment is to start a Drb server on 9010 port — and Heroku will not allow this! So, we have to comment out all the configuration in config/ferret_server.yml to ensure that this loads like it does in development. I hate this but no alternative for now. I do plan to migrate to the WebSolr that Heroku is offering but its at 20$ per month! Lets see how that works out.

This should at least get you started on ferret – phew!

BackgrounDrb woes

BackgrounDrb comes with its own baggage I must say. Heroku proposes the use of DelayedJob (yippee) and I have just this plan, so rather than even try to figure out a way to get backgrounDrb to work on Heroku, I simply commented out the config/backgroundrb.yml settings (to ensure it does not get initialized).

I also had to comment out all the MiddleMan references in the controller. The backgrounDrb workers are easily  modified so that they can work as DelayedJob objects . I have mentioned this in my earlier posts Moving from BackgrounDrb to DelayedJob

Once this was done, I did not face any problems and after some quick code fixes, git commits and git push’es, I was able to get my heroku application up and running.

All in a days work! Thats really amazing. Now, the next step is to get WebSolr  and DelayedJob integrated and see if I can move onto a bigger storage setup — a couple of months will let me know if this move was right.

When I bought my first home in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1996, it was only a step above a dump, but I was pretty thrilled with the fact that I was finally able to afford a place of my own. I also knew that with vision, some hard work and even more money, I could turn this three-bedroom, 1 bath abode into my own little palace.

Since I was no longer in an apartment and could make my own rules, I got a pet to keep me company; a sweet little lilac-point Siamese kitty that I named, Little Mouse, after a term of affection my mother called me.

Always on the lookout for an escape ...

One afternoon, when my friend, Lynnette, arrived to go shopping with me, she darted out the door before I could stop her.

The cat, not Lynnette. Though I’m sure she’s fast on her feet when she needs to be, Lynnie’s far too proper a lady to do anything like scamper.

Shortly after luring The Varmint —  I mean, The Mouse — out from under the porch with a tube stuffed with catnip, my neighbor’s brother-in-law, whom we’ll call Randy, came out on the porch.

“Was that your cat I heard out last night making that awful racket,” he asked with a bit of a twang.

“It certainly wasn’t,” I replied in my huffiest, East Coast voice.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! She’s an indoor cat.”

“Well she looks like she’s outside right now …”

“I can assure you, she was inside the house all last night.” I began to think the local animal shelter where I adopted her had come to investigate my fitness as a parent. But, since Tommy and Marie (my neighbors, not some Vegas knock-off) often had company for extended periods, I kept my tone a few degrees above a glacier.

“Why do you ask,” I inquired.

Cute, maybe, but better off in the woods!

“Well, last night I heard an awful racket outside and I came out to see what it was. I didn’t seen nothin’ outside, but then I heard a noise in the garage. I go in there and there’s this old pair of Carhartt overalls hanging up in there. And it’s got something moving inside it.

“Well, wouldn’t you know, I come to find there’s a ferret inside ‘em! He was real cute, and I brought him in the house. I showed it to Marie and she took a likin’ to him. We even thought we might keep it for a pet!”

I didn’t dare ask how he knew the sex of a ferret. Some questions are just better left unanswered.

“But it was gettin’ pretty late,” he added, “and we didn’t have anything to put him in, so we decided we’d take the little critter to bed with us.”

OK, at this point, I worked like a sled dog to not break out laughing. And I didn’t dare ask why his sister was in the bed, too. I figured anyone willing to cuddle with a domesticated polecat wouldn’t let something like incest bother him.

“Anyway, we all went to sleep fine until the mornin’, when the alarm went off,” he continued. “It must have scared him (pronounced skurred), because he bit my toe! I was so mad, I took him and threw him out the door!”

I politely mumbled some kind of condolence for his trouble. And just as nonchalantly as he appeared, Randy went back into the house.

I turned to Lynnette and with one arm firmly around my cat, and the other stretched out in greeting, looked at her and said,

“Welcome to my white-trash neighborhood.”

Not quite sure why I chose this post, but I noticed this little phenomenon and I thought I’d bring it to the attention of you fashionably obsessed.

The Ferret is the new pug. That’s right. These domesticated, loveable little furballs are the rave for the new season. They belong to the weasel family and they tend to sleep more than other domesticated animals, roughly about 14 to 18 hours a day (and you thought your cat slept a lot).

Ferrets are the ultimate sociable, loving to curl up on your leg, and nuzzle their noses on your cheek. When they’re excited, expect to see them do their infamous war dance – guaranteed to be the life of the party. They also love playing hide-and-seek!

They’re carnivores – so they do eat meat, but they do have a healthy metabolism, and they don’t mind the leash; so you’ll have a partner when you’re out for your daily jog.

She is gone…. I sold her. Not by choice but it was better for her to go to a home where she can have the run of the house and endless hours of playtime. With Abby being so rough with her it wasnt fair that she had to stay in her cage for most of the day. So these are the last few snap shot I have of her.

I recently switched to Thinking Sphinx from ferret and in doing so, I encountered some problems with deploying it with Capistrano. I tried to follow the official directions, but to no avail. So here are some of the gotchas I found:

Context: Deploying from Windows XP to Ubuntu Heron using Capistrano

1. After you get thinking-sphinx installed and running, make sure to have svn ignore the db/sphinx folder. The recipe in the official directions needs to create a symlink from db/sphinx to your shared folder and will be unable to do so if the folder already exists.
2. Remember to remove all references to ferret! I had acts_as_ferret in a few of my models, and although I had turned off the ferret server, it locked up my web app whenever I did updates on a record.
3. These are the portions of my recipe which differ from the official recipe:

   namespace :deploy do
     task :rebuild_index, :roles => :app do
       thinking_sphinx.stop
       update
       thinking_sphinx.index
       thinking_sphinx.start
       restart
   end
   

   I use this for when I make changes to the index and need to rebuild the index. I made sure to put ‘thinking_sphinx.stop’ above ‘update’ to ensure that the server will be stopped using the old conf file if there is one.

   I also put in:

   task :update_config, :roles => [:app], :except => { :no_release => true } do
     thinking_sphinx.configure
   end
   before 'deploy:finalize_update', :symlink_sphinx_indexes
   before 'deploy:finalize_update', :update_config
   

   to regenerate the sphinx configuration file on each deploy because Capistrano will checkout into a new folder which won’t have the configuration file in it.

Here’s my recipe code: http://www.pastie.org/705288

Anyways, good luck to everyone else migrating to Thinking Sphinx!

The last of my ferrets passed away this weekend.  He was 7, which is quite a good life-span for a ferret.

It’s only now in the total absence of ferret presence in my life that I realize how much my daily habits were affected by my ferret babies. Today is the first day since he died and I find myself looking down everywhere I walk to make sure there’s no ferret in my path, watching as I open doors for ferret escapees, casually glancing around to see what the ferret is doing, and react to every little sound by thinking it’s a ferret making noise.

It’s strange to suddenly not be a ferret owner after having been one for the better part of a decade.  It wasn’t always easy. Ferrets are high maintenance pets with special living needs and are prone to health problems. But they are delightful, funny, spunky pets like no other which makes up for the former.

That being said, I’m not ready to start it all again yet. In fact, I think I’ll take a break before getting any pets.

I will miss being a ferret owner.  And I certainly miss my ferret babies.

Havoc, Chaos and Vermin

They were cute weren’t they?  Perhaps I’ll adopt some more one day.

As the H1N1 flu continues to move around the globe infecting large numbers of people and causing deaths many of use are looking into the crystal ball of the fall and wondering what it will bring.  One way of dealing with the flu is to avoid large crowds…something that is  of course not possible at the hajj Every year, the single largest gathering on the planet is the annual pilgrimage to Mecca where approximately 2.5 million people from 160 countries will pack into a small city in Saudi Arabia for five days. No doubt, some of the pilgrims will be bringing the flu.

The Saudi authorities, fearing that the hajj could turn their holy city into a petri dish for viral mutations and a hub for spreading a new pandemic wave around the world, are working hard to head that off. They have asked some worshipers, including pregnant women and the elderly, not to make the trip, which is scheduled for the last week of November.

“The hajj is a central ritual of Islam, and our country tries to make it easy for everyone to come,” said Dr. Ziad A. Memish, the country’s assistant deputy minister for prevention “We’ve said we won’t turn away anyone who arrives at our borders. But we are recommending to other countries whom they should let come.” Although the Saudis have turned to the WHO and other health agencies for help in previous public health threats to the hajj, this year the CDC is more deeply involved because it has so much experience with the new flu.

While religious pilgrimages feed the souls of those who attend, they have in the past endangered the health of those who attend. Diseases that have been an issue in the past include meningitis and polio.

The hajj offers many opportunities to a virus that spreads through the air and lingers on surfaces: Pilgrims crowded into planes, boats, buses and tent cities; the endless ranks of the faithful praying shoulder to shoulder and touching their hands to the floors around the Kaaba, to handrails as they run between the hills Safa and Marwah, or to cups of water from the Zamzam Well.

The Journal of Science last week published a paper that describes the many the obstacles to fighting flu transmission at the Hajj. Dr. Memish, the Saudi official, is a co-author with several Centers for Disease Control experts. For example, pilgrims are advised to wash their hands frequently and bring their own surgical masks and hand sanitizers. The first is easy: Islamic law requires washing the hands and face five times a day before prayers. But male pilgrims may not wear anything with stitches in it; they wrap themselves in two lengths of unhemmed white cloth. And women on the hajj — even those who wear chadors at home — are forbidden to cover their faces. Also, since Islam forbids alcohol, some believers reject most hand sanitizers.  Senior religious leaders have issued fatwas declaring that masks and sanitizers “are not a problem,” Dr. Memish said, but every religion has some conservatives who believe in keeping up standards.

The Saudi government has made many preparations, like buying stockpiles of generic Tamiflu. The country has 76 health facilities staffed for the hajj, and intensive-care units have been expanded. For pilgrims, all medical care for problems they develop during their visit is free. “Saudi Arabia’s reputation rests on how the hajj is conducted,” Dr. Shahul H. Ebrahim, a Centers for Disease Control epidemiologist who advises the Saudi government, said in the Science article. “It’s a rich country, they take a lot of national pride in it and the king is responsible. I don’t think anything is lacking here except vaccines.”

In countries with large Muslim populations, many applicants get one or two chances in a lifetime at the pilgrimage that every Muslim is supposed to make, and “some people save money for their whole lives to do it,” he said. More than half of all pilgrims are over 50. In a normal year, many of those desperate to come before they die are pushed in wheelchairs or carried around the Kaaba and through the other rituals.

Pandemic H1N1 and the 2009 Hajj http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1183210

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/world/middleeast/30flu.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=hajj&st=cse

Pet Ferret Dies of H1N1

A news station in Hastings, Nebraska has reported that Stormy the ferret, one of four ferrets in a family of humans sick with the flu, has died from the H1N1 virus. Testing was done by the University of Nebraska Veterinary Diagnostic Lab where the ferret tested positive for H1N1. The state public health veterinarian said it is not unexpected, but it is rare.

This continues to point out the fact that when a human is sick in a household with pets that the pets should be kept apart from the sick individual and good hand and cough hygiene is important to prevent disease transmission – to any species!

http://vetmedicine.about.com/b/2009/11/01/h1n1-swine-flu-ferret-dies-in-nebraska.htm

I listed my cute fuzzy lovable ferret in the buy and sell in hopes of finding her a new home. I can not believe how many people have contacted me! Like really?? I mean I love the thing but they are a lot of work and female ferrets have the worst smell they tend to leave behind. The only time Roxy gets out to play is if I have enough time to bathe her before. I have for some reason been playing with her a lot recently but with me not having a job buying food for her seems dumb considering Im also paying off a car with no job. I think I have to pick one or the other. I hate it but she has to go.

This little ferret alerts his owner when he’s about to have a silent seizure:

Do you believe that a ferret is an unusual service animal? What about a boa or a Macaque monkey? More from the Seattle Times Newspaper:

The public long has become accustomed to guide dogs for the blind, first used in 1929. But when the use of dogs for other types of help for the disabled — such as alerting deaf people to sounds, pulling wheelchairs and helping with mobility issues — became common after enactment of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, controversy over access came with it.

The controversy intensified as other species entered the service-animal ring, and as “emotional-support animals,” those designated to help someone suffering from some form of mental illness, have become common.

Courts and human-rights commissions from East Coast to West Coast have dealt with access complaints pertaining to a service iguana, ferrets, a duck, goats and miniature horses, to name a few. The species are so varied that the Department of Transportation (DOT) mentioned some by name: spiders, for example, in regulations banning them from flying in aircraft cabins.

That the DOT mentioned spiders by name “means somewhere along the line, somebody brought … a service spider on the aircraft,” wrote Candy Harrington, editor of Emerging Horizons, a magazine for disabled travelers, in her blog. “I have to say in all honesty, that if the person seated next to me whipped out a service spider, I would be teaching that arachnid to play dead … faster than the airlines can raise their excess-baggage charges.”

However, “I know a lot of people with service animals, and they really do provide a service. In most cases they allow folks to be more independent. But when you throw in the unusual or exotic service animals, that tends to discredit folks with standard service animals. They have a hard enough time gaining access to public accommodations, and it’s even harder when business owners read about the unusual service animals,” Harrington said. Ginger Luke owns the Rickshaw Restaurant in North Seattle and founded Ginger’s Pet Rescue, which places abandoned dogs, including some who become service animals. She’s skeptical about nontraditional service animals.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Here’s your awwwwww for the day. Such a adorable ferret. Very funny too. I can’t believe it actually got into the guitar…. Diddums!

Darsh

It’s one thing for shoplifters to hide plunder in their pants. But a live ferret?

Police said a homeless man in north Florida did just that. And he made it out the door before being challenged. Rodney Bolton, 38, was charged with theft over the $129 animal that police say he took from a pet store in Jacksonville Beach.

A 17-year-old witness confronted Bolton in the parking lot and was bitten by the animal after the man allegedly shoved it in the teen’s face.

That confrontation makes the ferret a “special weapon” under Florida law. So Bolton also faces battery charges for dangerously wielding the animal.

Calls to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department to see if Bolton has a lawyer were not answered.