Pet Cause for Ferret Fans

The T-shirt says it all: “Hey Arnold -- Legalize Ferrets!”

To underscore the point, it shows a ferret -- a weasel-like creature banned in California since 1933 -- sniffing around Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star on Hollywood Boulevard.

For untold thousands of ferret fanciers, it’s a powerful image. Schwarzenegger is the only governor in the state’s history who has costarred with a ferret in a major motion picture. And when decades of pleading with bureaucrats and legislators have failed to put the pet you love on the right side of the law, hope is where you find it.

Many ferret folks in California -- law-breakers all -- take heart in Schwarzenegger’s role as a ferret-owning undercover officer in the 1990 film “Kindergarten Cop.” Others see him as just the take-charge guy they need to reverse the state’s long-held impression of ferrets as terminators of endangered birds and other wildlife.

“He’s worked with ferrets in ‘Kindergarten Cop,’ so he knows they’re not the man-eating creatures that Fish and Game makes them out to be,” said Mary Shefferman, the Smithtown, N.Y.-based editor of Modern Ferret magazine. “He would definitely sign a ferret bill. Once he gets through some of the more pressing issues on his desk, it would be a nice, warm, fuzzy kind of thing to do.”

A bill granting amnesty to current ferret owners passed the Senate last spring but was stalled in an Assembly committee. At least five previous bills have flopped.

A veteran ferret advocate, Laurie Pickersgill, owner of three All Pet Headquarters stores in Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley, calls Schwarzenegger “our best chance.”

“Before, we never had anyone who could give a hoot,” said Pickersgill, who has owned six or so ferrets herself.

“When the last one passed away, I decided I wouldn’t replace him,” she said. “If they found me with one, I’d be criminal of the month. It would be splattered all over the newspapers.”

In “Kindergarten Cop,” Schwarzenegger plays John Kimble, a tough L.A. police detective who has to do undercover duty as a kindergarten teacher in small-town Oregon. He wins over a roomful of raucous 5-year-olds -- and eventually nabs a killer -- with the help of his constant companion, a pet ferret.

Herschel Weingrod, one of the film’s three writers, said the ferret was intended as more than just Schwarzenegger’s pet.

“It immediately made the point that he was eccentric and living on the edge,” he said. “And he was a cop; I’m sure he knew he had an animal he wasn’t allowed to have.”

“Kindergarten Cop” is a favorite of many ferret people. Earlier this year, it was played at the 10th-anniversary party of a statewide group called Ferrets Anonymous. But some owners are overly enthusiastic and are taking the film too literally, said Hildy Langewis, whose California Domestic Ferret Assn. finds homes for 300 abused and neglected ferrets yearly.

“I get calls all the time,” she said. “Some of these people think ferrets will be legal Jan. 1 just because Arnold is governor.”

For others, assuming that “Kindergarten Cop” made Schwarzenegger pro-ferret is about as logical as it would have been to assume that “Bedtime for Bonzo” made Ronald Reagan pro-chimp.

Jeanne Carley, founder of Californians for Ferret Legalization, said the governor would be swayed by his innate decency, not by his old screen role.

“The state wildlife agency doesn’t regulate cats and dogs, so why should it regulate ferrets?” she asked. “They’re domesticated pets, for Pete’s sake. We have an inequity here and this man is sensitive to that kind of thing.”

Like other ferret fans, Carley pointed out that no other state but Hawaii bans the animals. Those that once did have changed their policies “without angst,” she said, and none have been plagued by the colonies of feral ferrets feared in California.

Ferret ownership, a misdemeanor, is not one of the crimes that have California SWAT teams scrambling. Wildlife officials say it’s usually prosecuted when a child is bitten or a ferret owner is turned in -- sometimes by a vengeful ex-spouse.

But, “Kindergarten Cop” or not, the state Department of Fish and Game is sticking to its guns, said Ron Jurek, a department wildlife biologist.

Jurek has been a persuasive opponent of legalization. He points to places like New Zealand, where the government last year declared ferrets “unwanted predators” because of their keen taste for the flightless kiwi bird, the nation’s beloved symbol.

In the United States, most states don’t have ferret problems because they don’t have California’s diverse ecosystem or Mediterranean climate, Jurek said. If ferrets here took to the wild, they would breed like crazy and rampage through colonies of ground-nesting birds like the endangered least tern, he said.

“Like any kind of weasel, they’re very good at what they do,” Jurek said. “And weasels keep on killing.”

Ferret people have heard the arguments before and dismiss them. Ecologically, New Zealand is nothing like California, they say.

More importantly, they contend, ferrets have been pets so long that they have lost the ability to survive outdoors, no less go on ruthless killing sprees. Besides, they say, most ferrets are neutered before they are sold.

“They’re like kittens all their lives,” said Pickersgill, the pet-store owner. “They’re silly from the day they’re born until the day they die. They can’t possibly survive in the wild.”

Which side the governor will take is unknown. Questions to his staff on the issue went unanswered. To change the state’s regulation, Schwarzenegger would either have to appoint pro-ferret members to the state Fish and Game Commission or encourage passage of a pro-ferret bill.

A bill by state Sen. Dede Alpert (D-San Diego) made it through the Senate last March on a vote of 31 to 5, despite opposition from the California Waterfowl Assn. and a group called Defenders of Wildlife. It would make current ferret owners law-abiding citizens, but ban new ferret sales or imports pending an environmental study to be financed by ferret-registration fees.

In a recent interview, Alpert said she hoped to move the measure through the Assembly in 2004.

She said she never saw “Kindergarten Cop.” But she is buoyed -- or at least she was until recently -- by “Along Came Polly,” an upcoming film in which Jennifer Aniston has a pet ferret.

News surfaced recently that the ferret bit Aniston’s co-star, Ben Stiller, during the film’s final scene.

“He did this crazy turn-around thing, and he literally attached himself to my chin and didn’t let go,” Stiller told reporters. “Their teeth are sharp, like razors.”

That isn’t the kind of celebrity endorsement Alpert needs just now.

“This has proven much more difficult than anyone can imagine,” she said.