Like secret lovers, California ferret owners must go to great lengths to hide their passion.
In a Concord backyard, Sandy (no last name) lugs an animal carrier into a small wire pen. She opens the door and four long, skinny animals slink out—Sandy identifies them as Puff, Hawley, Boo, and Walter Frederick “Fred” Ferretude. Puff, Boo, and Fred waddle around exploring, sniffing the ground, but Hawley doesn’t want to stay put. She scratches at the dirt with her long claws, hoping to dig her way out of the pen to explore the rest of the yard. These are ferrets: cute, clumsy—and illegal. California is one of only two states where it is against the law to own a pet ferret.
“Not everyone knows about ferrets,” Sandy says. Sandy can’t give her full name, because she’s harboring wanted fugitives. “But everyone in the ferret underground knows.”
Across the state, thousands of otherwise law-abiding ferret enthusiasts are living a furtive, secretive life to protect themselves and their pets. This is the ferret underground, where ferret owners have banded together to form secret clubs where they can safely meet kindred spirits. Club rosters don’t include addresses, and members are only listed by their first names. Some members refuse to show up to actual club meetings, fearful of prying eyes. Those that do attend rarely use the “F” word in mixed company. In front of strangers, they talk about “chinchillas,” “Peruvian hamsters,” or “Texas polecats.”
“Because ferrets are legal in all states other than Hawaii, many people come to California either on vacation or because they are moving here and don’t know about the ban on ferrets here,” says Kimberly Bruno, president of the Northern California Ferret Alliance. “Then they either have their pet taken from them at the border or they get into California with the ferret, turning them into a criminal for their choice of pet.”
Ferrets are members of the weasel family, long skinny descendants of European polecats first domesticated 2,500 years ago. They might look untrustworthy, with their raccoon-like masks and their long saber teeth, but they’re as playful and clumsy as kittens. Before the introduction of cats to Europe, they were aristocrats’ preferred way of ridding their castles of rodents. Puff and her cohorts retain little of that old hunting instinct; they’re content to work out their energy in play wrestling. Puff slinks out of a hammock and waddles over to pounce on Hawley. Hawley shakes her off and Puff bounces up and down, almost tripping over her own feet.
Proponents of the ban, including the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club, worry that escaped ferrets could go feral and threaten local wildlife. But ferret enthusiasts insist that ferrets don’t have the instincts to survive for more than a few days outdoors, making them far less likely to do damage to the environment than stray cats.
As president of the Northern California Ferret Alliance, Bruno is often the first person that people turn to when they discover escaped ferrets wandering outside.
“The phone calls I get are crazy,” she says. “‘A ferret came through my cat door!’ ‘I found one in my shorts while I was on the toilet!’ They don’t do well outside. When they’re outside, they try to get inside or go up to people. People find them trying to play with feral cats and they don’t understand why the cats don’t want to play with them.”
Gloria from Berkeley once took her ferret kit, Colin, for a walk in Tilden Park, thinking he would enjoy a glimpse of the great outdoors. But Colin preferred being inside, so he made right for the closest enclosed space: He tried to scuttle up her pantleg.
“Usually he can’t wait to get out of his carrier,” she says. “That was the one time that he wanted to get back in.”
And Colin may be a coward when it comes to fresh air, but Gloria says he never shies away from playing tag with her parents’ cat, a ragdoll twice his size.
Ferret owners argue that their pets are no different than dogs or cats, capable of the same love and devotion. But ferret owners are a different breed than cat or dog owners. Ferrets are high-maintenance animals, always hyper, curious, and getting into trouble, and it takes a special fanaticism to deal with an animal this energetic. Most aficionados have between two and five ferrets.
Since ferret owners are reluctant to reveal themselves, it isn’t clear how many ferrets are kept as pets in California. The best estimate comes from a 2006 survey by PetCo, cataloging all the ferret food that the pet store chain sold in the state. The survey estimated that there were approximately 100,000 ferrets in California, a number that’s expected to have grown in the interim.
The underground is an open secret in California, where most pet stores stock ferret food and toys. (Since actual ferrets are not for sale, owners either travel out of state to buy animals or adopt rescues through the club networks.) In the past, some California veterinarians have been wary of treating ferrets because of rumors that the state Fish and Game department may audit their records; others see ferrets but list them as “cat” or simply “small animal” in their records.
“Because of fear of confiscation, many people won’t take their ferrets to get medical attention,” says Dr. Rene Gandolfi, a ferret-friendly vet from Castro Valley. “People would bring ferrets in from hundreds of miles away because they couldn’t find a local vet to look at them.”
Gandolfi recalls a time 10 years ago, when one of his ferret-owning clients was arrested and the Fish and Game department demanded her pet’s medical records.
“I said, ‘I’ll be happy to comply if you come back and produce a search warrant,’” says Gandolfi. “‘And give me some warning so that I can have the Channel 2 news here when you show up.’ I never heard from them again.”
At a recent meeting of the Northern California Ferret Alliance held at a Concord Marie Callender restaurant, people come from all over the East Bay, from Martinez, Concord, and Castro Valley. There’s a deaf couple from San Jose, attending the meeting for the first time. But what they all have in common is a devotion to spreading the good word about their weasely friends.
The conversation is dominated by pet talk, the same stories of cute animal high jinks that you hear from any group of pet owners, and traded tips about ferret health and training. But attendees also swap stories of close calls, of outsiders who almost stumbled onto their secret.
Government enforcement of the ban is spotty at best, varying by county. While owners say that the East Bay is relatively tolerant of the ferrets in its midst, that doesn’t mean that they can relax. They live in fear of the Fish and Game department, the agency responsible for enforcing the ban, but the reality is that the department doesn’t have the time or resources to seek out illegal ferrets. A bigger threat comes from nosy neighbors and disgruntled relatives, since a single phone call can alert the authorities.
“One of our board members had a daughter on drugs, so she had to do some tough love and tell her to get off drugs or leave,” says Janeen S., president of the Golden State Ferret Society. “The daughter was angry, so she called Fish and Game. Because this owner knew people in the ferret networks, she was able to get her ferrets shuffled out the back door as Fish and Game came in the front. But living like this, you’re scared all the time.”
Owners say that their caution is justified. Although it’s rare, some people have been arrested for possession of their pets. In 1995, an Arizona resident was arrested as he crossed the border with his ferret at Blythe. When he couldn’t pay a $500 fine, he was sentenced to four days in jail, although he was quickly released a day later when the story embarrassed the county in the press. In 1996, a Fresno ferret owner was sentenced to two years’ probation, during which Department of Fish and Game officers could search her home at any time without notice. In 2000, Ferrets Anonymous founder Pat Wright spent 45 days in a San Diego jail for scuffling with a police officer trying to confiscate his pet.
The maximum penalty for harboring an illegal ferret is six months in jail and a $1,000 fine—but, worst of all for owners, seized ferrets are euthanized.
Janeen S. says that she put off hiring a repairman to replace a broken faucet for months, until she learned, through the grapevine, of a plumber who was known to be ferret friendly. Other owners tell similar stories, although not every stranger is eager to turn in people’s pets.
Frank from Martinez recalls the time he called animal control to get rid of an opossum on his balcony. He forgot that his ferret, Chiquita, was running loose in the house, and when the animal control officer came in the door, she bounded over to greet him.
“The guy came in and saw my ferret walking around,” says Frank. “He said, ‘She’s cute. Don’t let me see that.’ Now I’m a lot more careful.”
“It’s like getting a speeding ticket,” says Kimberly Bruno. “Sometimes you get someone who’s cool and sometimes you get someone who’s a stickler. Some people are very paranoid, but you have to be careful. I used to live with my grandparents, and I had them ‘ferret trained’: If someone knocks at the door, you don’t just open it unless you know who they are.”
Michelle from Santa Cruz explains how one of her ferrets escaped from her home and a neighbor turned him in to animal control. She asked animal control if she could visit her ferret in the days before he was scheduled to be moved to a Nevada shelter. Every day, she came in to visit and play with him.
“At first, they’d lead me to the back but, toward the end, they were so used to seeing me that they’d just wave me in,” she says. “And on the last day before he was to be taken away, I just carried him out and no one noticed.”
Californian ferret owners dream of a time when they can take their pets out in public without fear. But in the past, attempts to legalize ferrets have fallen flat. In 2004, one bill made it as far as Gov. Schwarzenegger’s desk only to be vetoed. In 2006, another legalization bill died in the legislature. At the moment, most East Bay ferret owners are skeptical that they will see a change anytime soon, but they’re used to this clandestine life.
“Sometimes when I visit Nevada, I see people walking their ferretson leashes and I’ll be all, ‘What are you doing?!’” says Bruno. “You forget that it’s not the same way in other parts of the country. We can just hope to have it the same way here someday.”
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Mike Rosen-Molina is an East Bay writer and frequent contributor to The Monthly. More of his writing can be seen on mikerosenmolina.com. He lives with his wife, four rats, and four chinchillas.