We sometimes peruse the "ferret" section (Pets) on Craigslist, because we've had ferrets for nearly 30 years and always will. We care for them as family. They ARE family. We used to scoff at folks who felt that way about "mere pets". Ferrets have taught us how wrong we were.

In mid September, 2009, we happened upon an ad placed by a woman in the Seattle area (south of Seattle) who claimed she had a very sick ferret who was unable to play and had been that way for some days or weeks, and she was asking for advice. She explained that she had purchased the ferret from another woman on Craigslist.

We know that ferrets are prone to swallowing things they can't digest, and when those small items plug their digestive tracts, they become weak in a matter of days. If a ferret becomes too weak, it will not survive any aggressive treatment it might need, such as an operation to remove said small obstruction. This is one of the most common ways that people lose ferrets. Ferrets can suffer from any number of other ailments as well, and since they're so small, and their metabolisms are so fast, a small problem can overnight morph into a life-threatening problem. Because of this we advised the poster to immediately, if not sooner, get her ferret to a vet. It was not particularly productive, we felt, to be posting ads on Craigslist for ferret health care advice. Western Washington fortunately is home to many good ferret specialists. All that's required is to make a couple of calls. This ferret could have, and should have been, with a qualified vet the following morning, at the latest. Here's our reply to her original ad (http://seattle.craigslist.org/skc/pet/1374899919.html).

Please, please, we beg you, take her to a FERRET vet. She "might" be sick, and if she is, and you wait to take her to the vet, she can be too weak to save her if she needs intensive care. They do sleep a lot, as much as 16 hours per day, but if she's not really hyper and playful when she's awake, then there is a problem..

We offered that advice, then forgot about the matter. We'd done all we could do. Now it was up to the owner. Over the next week or so we thought about her ferret a few times, silently hoping she had gotten it proper care, and hoping that care was successful. This was, we assumed, the end of this incident for us.

Craigslist retains copies of every ad ever placed, so the ad is available in their archives with a subpoena.

A week or so later we happened to be perusing the Pets section again. There was a new ad, obviously placed by the same woman, this time seeming to be frantic, asking for the names of local ferret vets. The title of her new ad was:

"NEED A VET FOR FERRETS ASAP (Des Moines)"

We see that she deleted it after a few days, rather than let it expire. We can only attempt to imagine the emails she received from outraged pet owners.

Clearly the situation had deteriorated to emergency levels. Clearly she had taken no one's advice and gotten her ferret to a vet. We were AMAZED. We're not easily amazed by stupid human behavior anymore, but we were amazed by what we saw here as the most careless and lackadaisical concern for a sick and possibly dying ferret that we had ever seen. We were angry as Hell, and we fired back to her as follows, and also placed this same content back on Craigslist in the form of a new ad, hoping someone could get to this idiot and correct the situation. We still didn't want to become directly involved. We hoped that someone reading about this fiasco would know who the woman was, and talk some sense into her:

> We told you to get her to a vet nearly a Go--amned week ago. If you're > this f--king stupid you should NOT have a ferret. We're going to call > the humane society in the morning. Craigslist will help them track > you. You don't post on CL to find a vet in an emergency. You open the > Go--amned phone book and start calling. This is absolutely outrageous!

We immediately began receiving dozens of replies from other angry readers. The following illustrates the tone of most:

NICE RESPONSE! I actually wrote to her and listed a host of Vet's that are good, what their hours are and what the problems might be SO get her ass to the vet ASAP. Nice that others did, but she is still stupid. I hope someone does call and report her.

Since there was so much response to our ad, we felt completely assured that the foolish ferret owner would be contacted and would simply TAKE HER PET TO THE VET. It ain't bloody Rocket Science.

Another week passed, and we had forgotten the matter. Today, out of the blue, we received the following brainless reply from the ferret owner:

Is your little threat supposed to scare me?  If so it didn't work :)

Ok. So now we got it. It was clear to us we were dealing with a woman who was perhaps mentally handicapped, certainly a terminally counter-productive smart-mouth, and obviously someone who was far more interested in striking back at good advice than with caring for her pet. This enraged us. We hadn't intended to "scare" her, we had intended to HUMILIATE HER -- to humiliate her into TAKING HER PET TO THE VET! Like every other thinking being, we're sick to damned death of the stupid. What did she mean, "It didn't work?" Apparently she meant that because we had been rude to her (as rude as we knew how to be), she was going to spite us and purposely refrain from taking her ferret to the vet. Just to spite us. Just to "show us" that there was nothing and no one on earth who could entice her to DO THE RIGHT THING by her little friend. Hell, with friends like her, that ferret doesn't need enemies. The email address she used to send this tripe (and what did she think it was going to accomplish?) was as follows:

joanna3_4@hotmail.com

We immediately fired back as follows:

Then I must conclude that you are purposely torturing this ferret and willfully denying it vet care. I am calling the police at this moment, and I am placing an ad in PETS urging all others who were disgusted with your fucking stupidity to do the same.

We did call SPD and were referred to Animal Control, but we don't yet know the county of residence of this sociological prize, so Animal Control has yet to act. In the ad she listed her location as Des Moines, but if she's just a little south of that she'll be in Pierce County, not King..

Immediately we received the following response from this piece of human garbage:

Still making me laugh, you should probably get the whole story next time before judging people, i don't think you deserve an explanation personally because you are a bully and just like to pick on innocent people, but do what you wish

So.....this smart-mouth cow thinks the entire issue is humorous. She thinks we are bullies for trying to embarrass her into TAKING CARE OF HER ANIMAL. She also seems to think she's "innocent". At least she gave us written permission to "do what we wish". So be it; we will. We don't "deserve an explanation" because she certainly DOESN'T HAVE ONE. She feels she can flaunt her lack of caring for her pet, make jokes about it, rub her apparent incompetence in the face of people whose only concern was to save her ferret, and she can trollop off, skipping and giggling, and no one will take steps to see that the situation is rectified. The Liberal world is full of this disgusting mentality. They're wrong. We had the story in her own words, and that was all we needed to know in order to conclude that this person was NOT properly caring for this animal.

We received a couple more adolescent, stupid, smart-mouth emails from this tart. We finally blocked her. Nothing rational was destined to come from her.

She has been advised of the location of this web page. She is reading it repeatedly at this moment (we can track her IP hitting it again and again on our server). We have no idea at this point if her ferret is dead, if she ever took it to any vet, if it is at this very moment suffering, dying, reaching a point of no return, or if it has become healthy on its own. We do believe that people THIS DAMNED STUPID AND UNCARING should never, ever own any animal, not even a relatively self-sufficient cat. Ferrets are anything but self sufficient, and when their health is compromised, death can occur in days, or hours. No sane or caring human being acknowledges that they have a serious emergency in a pet, and then tries to solicit others through a freaking classified ad to find a vet for them. Sane and caring humans OPEN THE PHONE BOOK and START DIALING, even if one must call emergency and after-hours numbers.

We want to have animal control follow up here and see if this turd of a person has killed this ferret, if it's being properly cared for otherwise, or if it needs to be forcibly removed for its own health and safety. To that end we need to find this person. We're offering a $100 reward for a current address and full name of this pet owner. If you want to forgo the hundred bucks and turn the data straight into animal control, please do that instead. Send a copy of this page to both King and Pierce county animal control offices to be safe. URGE them to ACTUALLY ACT. Please do whatever you can do to make sure this ferret isn't in danger. We're so incredible sick and tired of imbeciles that we really had no choice but to undertake this effort. We'll take this just as far as it needs to go, for as long as it takes. If you recognize this person's email address, or the various ads she placed, please do what's right and urge, compel, and insist that authorities follow this up. We'll place a comment box at the bottom of this page when we have time to code it in. Updates and new developments will be appended as the data becomes available.

If you're wondering how many other people are concerned about the health and welfare of pets, consider this: