Ferret News
Pet Ferret Care Tips
and Information
By Mary R. Shefferman & Eric Shefferman - along with Gabby, the ferret
www.ferretnews.com

contact: marymodernferret.com

  Every once in a while we come across something so cool that we just have to share it with you! We recently found a web site with some very amazing ferret video! You just have to watch and be amazed!

  To round out this newsletter, we also present some vintage video that we made for our Ferret Television web site back in 2000. You get to meet many of our ferrets and get to see many different hair colors on Mary.

  Most of these video files are quite large, so your best bet is to try to watch them somewhere with a fast internet connection. As an alternative (especially if you are connected to the internet via a modem or other slow connection), you can "right click" on the files and choose "save as" to save the files on to your hard drive. You can then view them whenever you want to.

- Eric

In this newsletter:

• Ferrets on Film!
   
• New Coupon for Mother's Day

Ferrets on Film!

By Eric Shefferman

  Ever wish you could videotape your ferrets doing the crazy things they do? Well someone has!

  This particular ferret video is amazing in a lot of ways. If you are a ferret lover, you'll appreciate the determination and effort demonstrated by this cute little ferret, Johnny.

  This video is also a great test for a potential ferret owner -- if you've been thinking about getting a ferret, watch this video! You'll have one of two reactions:

1. Oh my! I just have to have one (or more) of these mischievous little creatures running around my house! They're like mysterious little elves!
    

2. Oh my! I'd never be able to live with one of these creatures running around my house! They are little gremlins of havoc and mayhem!

  So watch this video here:

http://www.ferretocious.com/movies/BUSTED!.wmv

  If you know anyone who has been thinking about getting a ferret, have them watch this video. It will give them a much better idea whether or not a ferret is a good choice for them.

  This video comes from a site with a LOT of ferret videos, so go over there when you've got some time to check out all the action. There's a lot to see!

http://www.ferretocious.com

Our Own Ferret Videos

  Back in the year 2000 we were struggling to find a way to keep Modern Ferret magazine running despite how ill I was (I couldn't walk most of the year and I was hospitalized in August) and despite the fact that we could no longer get the magazine into pet stores (Fancy Publications bought out the company that was distributing us into pet stores).

  After I got out of the hospital I was temporarily full of energy (I was on an extremely high dosage of prednisone) and we tried to brainstorm for new ways to bring in money. We decided to take advantage of our our ability to learn new technologies by launching a web site featuring video with ferrets. We called it FerretTeleVision.com. We even filmed some video promos (spoofing the original MTV promos) with the catchphrase "I Want My FTV!" Mary's show was called (appropriately enough) The Mary Show and located at MaryShow.com.

  Note: Both these websites date back to 2000 and I don't even have the proper tools to edit them anymore. They may not work properly in any (or all) current browsers. That's why I have direct links to the videos later in this article.

  The FerretTV site was just way ahead of its time. Our video production computer was a Pentium II 266. The largest hard drive we had was 2 GB. The production process was painfully slow -- rendering the final video could take over a day. Back then, most people were connecting to the internet with a modem and very few of them had software installed on their computers to watch video (boy did we get a ton of complaints about this!). Our own connection was also via modem and it took a long time to get video files uploaded (especially better looking videos meant for high-bandwidth users).

  We hoped to attract some company to sponsor us, but we got no interest from any of the major ferret product manufacturers. It wound up just being a lot of work that didn't make any money on top of all the work we were already doing that didn't make any money.

  Here are links to the high bandwidth versions of the videos we did make. If you are on the web with a high speed connection they should pretty much just work. For slower connections, you may want to save them to your hard drive first. I've done my best to remake these files so that they look as good as possible -- I hope I did a good job with it.

Ferret Video #1 - The Mary Show Episode #1

  This video was created in October of 2000. Mary had pale pink hair. The video features ferret Halloween safety tips, ferret Halloween costumes, and and interview with Marc Morrone (of Parrots of the World and also host of Petkeeping with Marc Morrone) about Angora ferrets. I'm pretty sure that all the costumed ferrets are our ferrets -- we were in a real rush to get this done. I miss having so many of them. They were all great little people and such good sports about all the photos we took.

Mary Show Episode #1 - Ferret Halloween safety tips, ferret Halloween costumes, and all about the Angora ferret with Marc Morrone
(approximately 18 MB file)

Ferret Video #2 - The Dangling Red Thing

    When I got out of the hospital, they had me on 60mg of prednisone per day, so I pretty much never slept. I was up early one morning playing with the video camera and Koosh (our Angora ferret) and Cauliflower (a huge albino ferret from England) were running around the living room. I shot this video with just the available light -- the sunlight coming in through the window as the sun rose.

  The ferrets are playing with a little red chew toy that hung from the ceiling on a slightly elastic cord. It's true ferret entertainment. Two very large ferret boys just acting like boys.

  By the time Mary woke up, I had the video all finished. One of the few good things to come from taking lots of prednisone.

  Koosh was our ferret who did the product reviews in Modern Ferret magazine (he took over product reviews after Ralph died). Cauliflower had his "Dumb Albino Jokes" page in the last few issues of the magazine.

Two Ferrets and a Dangling Red Thing - Koosh and Cauliflower
(approximately 5 MB file)

Ferret Video #3

The Wit and Wisdom of the Modern Ferrets features the columns written by our ferrets Sabrina, Marshmallow, Knuks, Trixie, and Gabrielle during the first five years of publishing Modern Ferret magazine. Signed copies (signed by Mary) are still available.

  This video was done as a promo for our new (at the time) book The Wit and Wisdom of the Modern Ferrets: A Ferret's Perspective on Ferret Care.

  The cover of the book features Sabrina (brown girl) who was our first ferret surrounded by Marshmallow (albino boy behind her) and Knuks (dark-eyed white girl in front).

  In the lower right corner of the cover is Trixie (cinnamon girl) -- we still use that same picture of her on these newsletter pages!

  Not seen on the cover of the book is Gabrielle -- who is the ferret seen next to the Ferret News logo at the top of this web site.

  In this video, Mary has blonde hair. That's something that doesn't happen very often!

  Unfortunately, Sabrina and Marshmallow aren't in this video. I really don't remember if we ever had the chance to take any video of them. However, you do get to see footage of Trixie, Knuks, and a very young Gabrielle (she used to have much darker fur when she was younger).

Mary R. Shefferman and The Wit and Wisdom of the Modern Ferrets
(approximately 8 MB file)

  One of the saddest things about watching all these old videos is realizing how much I miss all these little animals. They were all very good friends. It's hard to believe that we once had so many of them all running around our living room. (See this photo for a photo of us with a bunch of our ferrets from around this time.)

  Somewhere we probably still have piles of raw video footage on tape. I know we taped Bob Church explaining a whole bunch of ferret anatomy, we taped a ferret show and how ferret judging works, and we taped care tips (like how to clip nails). Unfortunately, it would probably take a lot of money to put all this video together -- we still don't really have computers that are up to the challenge of large scale video editing. We also probably couldn't afford the bandwidth charges from everyone watching lots of video.

  We're also not likely to be able to shoot new video. We don't live in a place with a huge living room for the ferrets to run around, and we don't have nine ferrets anymore.

  Please let us know what you think of these videos -- we never got any real feedback on the FerretTV site because it was too far ahead of its time and very few people could enjoy it.

  Write to us at: marymodernferret.com

  Use this link: marymodernferret.com

  If you'd like to learn more about all our ferrets and see them grow up in the pages of a magazine, be sure to check out the Modern Ferret magazine Super Monster Pack of back issues.

Or you can support us directly by using one of these links.

New Coupon for Mother's Day

  Save $5.00 when you spend $50.00 at FerretDesigns, AmysDesigns, and PowerDesigns. Use the coupon code:

5MDAY

  All kinds of items: t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, mouse pads, sweatshirts and other stuff!

  Coupon expires May 8, 2005.

  Thanks for reading! We hope you enjoy the videos!

--Mary, Eric & Gabby (the lone ferret)

  Stay tuned for more. You can always get updates by reading Mary's blog (a blog is an online journal). She keeps it sporadically and it usually runs to the more personal stuff. But you might like it. It's at: