TWO giant ferrets have become star attractions at a Flintshire animal rescue centre.
Flintshire Wildlife and Pet Rescue Centre in Holywell has recently taken in the two creatures after they were found wandering the streets In Greenfield.
Rescue centre owner Elfyn Pierce-Jones, 59, owns 10 ferrets, but said he had never seen such big ones.
Specially trained ferrets are being used to deliver broadband to rural areas following groundbreaking techniques used by an internet provider.
The animals have been used by Virgin Media for over a year to help lay cables for its broadband service, the company has disclosed.
The ferrets wear jackets fitted with a microchip which is able to analyse any breaks or damage in the underground network.
The development could help increase broadband in current Internet "dead zones", giving access to inaccessible places, and and helping bridge the 'digital divide'.
Ferrets are still widely used in Britain, Europe and Australia to hunt rabbits. It is illegal to hunt rabbits using ferrets in the United States, although some areas permit ferrets to hunt rats, provided their owner has the appropriate permit. Ferrets are still used as rodent exterminators in many parts of the world.
How do you catch rabbits with ferrets, well quite simply the ferrets do down the holes and rabbits come out fast.
On occasions the rabbit will run down a dead end in the warren and be trapped by the ferret which may kill it or sit and guard the animal. When this happens the spade comes out and the digging begins. The ferrets are fitted with a radio transmitter which allows us to follow their movements underground and locate them.
P.S. -- If the pink eyes turn out to be a challenge with the ferrets, then one pink eye and one blue eye for each of the two ferrets would work just as well.
So are they legal in California now or what Zorgon? I could always send customers your way if so.... keep your Empire growing! Linda
haha....you have to love them to put up with all of the work that being a " breeder" involves. What makes me smile is when I see someone get overly impressed with the price I might get on one very fancy little girl Yorkshire Terrier (everybody wants the fancy little girls)... but they have no idea how much time I spend every day. 24/7.
Being interested about ten years ago I bothered to figure out my hours against the total income for that particular year.... Finally figured I was making about seventy-five cents an hour. And here is the difference!.... I thought that was great!
Where else can you be paid for loving something and having it love you back?.... meeting such nice extended families too! You should see all of the Christmas cards George and I get each year!
But I don't know nothing about birthin no ferrets. I knew that at one time they were illegal to keep in California.... ( what were they afraid of the great ferret escape and uprising?????) And ferret supplies are everywhere.... and I got to give it to you they are cute in kind of a toothy scarey way!!!!
So are they legal in California now or what Zorgon? I could always send customers your way if so.... keep your Empire growing! Linda
Greetings:
Did someone mention Yorkies?
(http://i1073.photobucket.com/albums/w400/thorfourwinds/Modernfamily.png)
(Ravell Call / Deseret News)
Modern family: A yorkshire terrier named Bridget tends to kittens at the Humane Society of Utah on April 27.
A mother's love: Yorkie adopts five kittens - Animal Tracks (http://animaltracks.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/10/11622180-a-mothers-love-yorkie-adopts-five-kittens)
Peace Love Light
tfwLiberty & Equality or Revolution
we had a ferret we found back in utah. we named him yasser ferret. (after yasser arafat).
he was a meanie little guy though.
I would be mean too if ya named me that :P
(http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs34/f/2008/304/c/b/CUTE_FERRET_by_emo4061.jpg)
A Scottish man was bitten while trying to steal four ferrets which he planned to sell to pay off a drug debt, Inverness Sheriff Court has heard.
James Marshall, from Smithton, Inverness, broke into a shed with another man on 20 February and took two of the ferrets.
The other two escaped.
(http://weirdcrime.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/James-Marshall.jpg)
The 20-year-old’s actions were captured on CCTV installed in the shed. Marshall was banned from leaving home between 22:00-06:00 and ordered to carry out 175 hours community work.
He had denied stealing four ferrets, four guinea pigs, three adult rabbits, four baby rabbits, a packet of bird feed, a plastic container, a skipping rope and two hutches.
Marshall also denied attempting to open a hutch and attempting to steal a rabbit.
However, he later admitted stealing the ferrets and attempting to steal a rabbit from a hutch.
The thefts were alleged to have happened while he was on bail.
Fiscal depute Karen Smith told the court that the owner of the ferrets was alerted to the incident by a security light being turned on in his garden.
The man found the door to his shed open and the four animals missing.
Ms Smith said: “He had CCTV installed and he could see two males going into the shed.
One of them was Marshall who seemed to be bitten on the hand by one of the ferrets.
This allowed two of them to escape and Marshall removed the other two.”
Three days later, Marshall was seen attempting to break into a rabbit hutch to steal a rabbit.
His solicitor John McColl told the court: “It is a very odd case and displays peculiar behaviour. It seems the idea to steal four ferrets was not his but the person with whom he was acting. He came up with the hair brained scheme because he wanted to sell them to pay off a drug debt.”
Mr McColl added: “My client is an animal lover and is disgusted with himself and is extremely sorry.”
Beijing is being invaded.
Overrun.
There's nothing you can do to stop the swarm.
Before you know it, they will be everywhere, maybe even inside your own home.
And what is this new threat?
It's FERRETS!
The word "ferret" is appropriately derived from the Latin word "feronum," which means "thief" - they often hide small belongings of their owners.
Ferrets love to jump and run. They're very active and naughty. Now, more and more Chinese people love to keep it as a pet.
These little friends can stay with you for more than 10 years if you take good care of them. They often climb behind furniture and also collect and hide things they like. Ferrets can sleep for 18 hours a day, and they won't mind to be locked in the cage when their owners go out for work, but owners still need to let them play outside the cage everyday.
Michelle Whitfield didn't know what a ferret was when her mother bought her one, but she soon fell in love with this curious little animal.
"Whoever coined the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat' had obviously never met a ferret," Wendy Hansard says.
"They have to know everything."
The Illawarra-based ferret breeder is wrestling one of her furry mammals as she tells me about her growing collection.
It's coming into ferret breeding season, which means the already busy Hansard household becomes even busier.
Wendy is out to change the negative perception of ferrets.
She says they're often associated with rabbit hunting for their ability to scurry down rabbit holes, and people assume they bite.
She sells her ferrets on the condition they're not used for hunting, and says they're clean animals that can be trained and enjoyed like any domestic pet.
You've heard of Yorkshire Terriers - well now there's Yorkshire Ferrets.1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment have just taken delivery of two new regimental mascots just before they leave for Iraq. The mascots - two ferrets named "Imphal" and "Quebec" after two of the Regiment's battle honours - were a gift from local people in Yorkshire, a tradition dating back to WW1. The ferrets will be kitted out in tiny uniforms in regimental colours and will form up on parade with the Battalion - on leads of course.
“The morale boost is amazing,” said Captain Laurence Roche. “The soldiers are fiercely proud of these things.” And there good for catching rabbits too
British forces stationed in Münster have welcomed furry reinforcements in the form of two royal regimental ferrets just prior to their deployment in Iraq.
“The morale boost is amazing,” British Army spokesman Captain Laurence Roche told The Local on Thursday. “The soldiers are fiercely proud of these things.”
The two mammalian mascots “Imphal” and “Quebec” recently travelled from England to join the 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment at the German base, which is home to the British Army’s 20th Armoured Brigade. The pair, named after battle honours, were a traditional gift from Yorkshire residents and have been adopted as official pets.
“We're not exactly sure, but we believe the tradition comes from the First World War when soldiers used ferrets when foraging for food,” Roche said, adding that the wee carnivores were used to hunt rabbits for the soldiers.
But these modern ferrets are purely symbolic and won't be along to supplement rations in November when the 300 soldiers from the battalion nicknamed “The Yorkshire Warriors” head to southern Iraq.
The ferrets will remain home in a cage just in front of the barracks, where they play a central part of military life, taking part in parades in their own tiny uniforms in regimental colours. When the troops are in formation, the ferrets are even allowed to scamper around the soldier's boots.
“They have a jacket in Brunswick (Braunschweig) green with a capbadge on the side of it and they have little hats and the regimental leads which are exactly the same as our stable belts. They’re the pride of the Battalion,” Provo Corporal Norman Shay said in an army statement.
The Yorkshire Warriors are the only British battalion to have ferrets, but a handful of units also have animal mascots, including goats, a horse and an Irish Wolfhound, Roche said.
A group of highly trained ferrets has been recruited to save a millennium pop concert in London.
When millions of people watch coverage of the Party in the Park concert in Greenwich on Millennium Eve, they can thank a team of "electricians" lent by the National Ferret Association.
The concert organisers have hired the ferrets to lay TV, lighting and sound cables along the tunnels under the stage in Greenwich Park - a novel way to get around the high cost of electricians' wages over the millennium period.
evencame across a site that sales stuff with ferrets on it
Specially trained ferrets are being used to deliver broadband to rural areas following groundbreaking techniques used by an internet provider.
The animals have been used by Virgin Media for over a year to help lay cables for its broadband service, the company has disclosed.
The ferrets wear jackets fitted with a microchip which is able to analyse any breaks or damage in the underground network.
The development could help increase broadband in current Internet "dead zones", giving access to inaccessible places, and and helping bridge the 'digital divide'.
Currently most broadband technologies are limited to short distances from central switching offices so most companies focus on cities to keep costs down.
The government has set a target of universal broadband access of 2Mbps by 2012. Analysts estimate that the cost of running fibre optic cables to all parts of the country could cost anywhere between £10 billion and £25 billion. A 50p levy of every phone line in the country has been proposed to cover costs.
Currently around two million homes, one in 10 households, are without broadband.
Jon James, director of broadband for Virgin Media, said: "For hundreds of years, ferrets have helped humans in various jobs. Our decision to use them is due to their strong nesting instinct, their long, lean build and inquisitive nature, and for their ability to get down holes. We initially kept the trial low-key as we wanted to assess how well the ferrets fitted into our operations before revealing this enterprising scheme."
Ferrets have been used to run cables through hard-to-reach places in the past.
Events organisers in London used them to run television and sound cables outside Buckingham Palace for the wedding of the Prince of Wales and the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
A similar system was used to lay the cables for televised coverage for the Party in the Park concert in Greenwich at the Millennium.
With their long lean build ferrets have historically been sent down holes to chase rodents and rabbits out of their burrows.
Caesar Augustus is thought to have sent ferrets to the Balearic Islands to control the rabbit plagues in 6BC.
;D
(http://i75.servimg.com/u/f75/13/55/53/83/drunk-10.jpg)
Weird fact of the day: Ferret Legging
An ancient English “sport” called “ferret legging” has contributed to the myths about ferret behaviour. The contestant had to tie his trouser legs around the ankles, then place two ferrets down his trousers before tying the waist closed. The object was to be the person that keeps the ferrets in his trousers the longest. Many people only lasted a few minutes before the ferrets nipped them, causing them to release them in a panic. The poor creatures must have been terrified, and it is no wonder that contestants were often bitten. Fortunately, ferret-legging has waned in popularity as awareness of animal welfare has increased.
link (http://open.salon.com/blog/saturn_smith/2010/05/04/weird_fact_of_the_day_ferret_legging)
We just lost one this week... Rin (short for Ai' Cam'wethrin "Little Thief" in Elvin) She was old almost 6 years and had a tumor. We had her recovering last month but then she suddenly took a turn. Then last night we put her into her bed and one of the others laid on her to keep her warm, putting his paws around her... was something I have never seen. The next morning we found her in the sleeping bag hammock peacefully asleep
I love that Ferret Clip A51! ;D
I saw a guy on a park bench in the main street of my hood whilst walking the bike who had two Ferret's in his Lap sleeping!
The Fezz Was so cute :)
Till it goes up your trouser leg :)
LOL
My Grandpa had ferret's and i was not fond of them when i was young, but now I see them treated with respect and I adore the little critter's!
I may leave the Ferret ownership to other people though! ;D