August 28, 2010 Columbus, Ohio



Ferret Buckeye Bash


By Beverly Mullet Randall, Animal Tracks

On August 28, at the Ferret Buckeye Bash at Vets Memorial, the ferret faithful met for a day of ferret fun, games and appreciation.

Lori Sies displays 26 years of ferret pins. She is from Lynx, Ohio, located about two hours south of Columbus, Ohio in Adams County.

The ferret festivities included ferret tube races...




ferret judging...


ferret awards...


and the winning name for the Name the Rescue Ferret Contest was Gussie.


Barbara Carlson, one of the ferret famous, was there. You might recognize her from the movie that ran on PBS, Ferrets: The Pursuit of Excellence, produced by Mark Lewis Radio Pictures. She is maybe best remembered in that movie singing a song she wrote entitled, "I have a little ferret," or more frequently identified by the refrain, "Ferret, oh, Ferret."

Barbara lives in Pittsburg, PA and currently is the Director of Hide-E-Hole Ferret Rescue and President of the Three Rivers Ferret Council, both in Pennsylvania. "I'm nuts," she says, adding that she is trying to find someone to take on some of these ferret duties so she isn't so busy.

In addition to ferreting, Barbara works as a secretary at Carnegie Mellon University for two "eminent" and "brilliant" mathematicians, Dr. Egon Balas, who is from Transylvania, Hungary and Dr. Gerard Cornuejols. She has worked for Dr. Balas since 1987. She was hired, in part, because she could type 138 wpm with one error and read Dr. Balas' handwriting. She said she has always liked math and as a Carnegie Mellon employee, has taken some classes including calculus, Pascal and C programming, and Strategies of Writing which teaches you to write for your audience. She enjoys writing and has written some short stories, in addition to some songs about ferrets--some original scores and some with her words set to "other people's music." "I do a lot of different things," she says.

Barbara currently has five personal ferrets, 25 shelter ferrets she cares for, and two dogs. She became a ferret person in 1986. Before then she had "all the stereotypical opinions about ferrets." Then a friend of hers introduced her to a ferret that could hold its own with one of her cats that was...formidable. When the ferret and cat met, "they touched noses and the cat sat back and said, 'huh'. I was so impressed."

As a new ferret person, she said she made all the mistakes, such as feeding the wrong food, so she "cornered her vet" in Pennsylvania and started gathering information about the care and feeding of ferrets. Bob of Casey's Hidden Pantry joined in the conversation at this point saying he had also started out feeding his ferrets the "wrong stuff." He and his wife have six ferrets. His first was a rescue from the Greater Chicago Ferret Association. It had insolinoma, a pancreatic cancer with malignant tumors that works the opposite way diabetes works with people, i.e., a diet with too much sugar and carbohydrates can overstimulate the pancreas, causing tumors to form. These tumors cause the pancreas to produce too much insulin, resulting in very low blood sugar levels in the ferret.

He and Barbara both said they found out that the best ferret diet was one high in meat, bones, and organs, including fur for roughage. Barbara added that a mouse is considered to be the "perfect nutritional package" for a ferret. So another benefit of ferret gatherings, in addition to fun, is sharing ferret information.

This show was presented by the Heart of Ohio Ferret Association & Rescue and ferret depot.com. Contributing sponsors were: Ferrets Magazine, Casey's Hidden Pantry, The HideyHole.com, and the Gahanna Animal Hospital. It was sanctioned by the American Ferret Association, Inc.