When Ferrets Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Own Ferrets

Bailey Nizama is gone but not forgotten. Her ashes are in a box that's decorated with a depiction of her wiggling down a rainbow road in the clouds toward whatever guardian keeps ferrets' souls. Nuestra hijita, hermana, the tribute reads. Our sister, our daughter. The box is kept in the living room of Bailey's successors, Nacho and Watson, who spend their days happily chattering—or "dooking"— rolling around the floor, burrowing inside couches, and scaling the walls.

"I feel like they have the best of cats and dogs," Veronica Nizama, their owner, coos.

Technically, she is breaking the law. Nacho, Watson, and Bailey are all illegal residents of New York City, where a ban on ferrets has persisted for decades. That means Nizama, a 28-year-old with an asymmetrical haircut and a Zelda obsession, can't exactly take her beloved boys out in public.

For the past three years, she's worked tirelessly to lift the ban. Nizama and the hundreds of ferret owners in New York City got their biggest break yet when the Board of Health agreed to reconsider the ban last week. But after the big buildup came a devastating letdown. Although the Board voted 3-2 in favor of allowing ferrets, six votes were needed for passage. The fact that four members abstained is a sticking point for Nizama.

"You don't want to think that government is lazy and that your crazy Republican uncle is right," she says. "But then something like this happens."

Ferrets were first banned from New York City in 1959, under the city's health code provision about owning "wild" animals. In 1999, the Board of Health went over the list of prohibited critters and decided to keep ferrets on there, citing their "unpredictable behavior" and attacks that have "become notorious for their severity and capriciousness." Fearing that a ferret could crawl into another apartment and eat a baby's face, the board concluded, "It would be irresponsible from a public safety perspective to allow a ferret to be kept as a pet in New York City."

About a month after that decision, on July 23, a ferret-rights activist named David Guthartz called into then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani's weekly radio show to confront him about the ban. That caused Giuliani to go into a now-infamous rant. "There is something deranged about you," the mayor told Guthartz. "The excessive concern that you have for ferrets is something that you should examine with a therapist." And throughout his tenure as mayor, Giuliani kept his hardline anti-ferret stance. In 2001, the New York City Counsel voted 26 to 13 to end the ban, only for him to veto the measure. (Guthartz, who isn't affiliated with Nizama's effort to legalize ferrets, was opposed to the bill the Board of Health shot down.)

New York City is far from alone in its disgust with the weasel-like creatures. They're also considered samizdat in Hawaii, California, Puerto Rico, Guam, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, among other locales. But even in jurisdictions where ferrets are allowed, their owners are often stereotyped as being smelly, eccentric hoarders, possibly because of their pets' odd, long bodies and musky scent.

Growing up in Miami, Nizama never imagined that a ferret could be so political. In her city of origin it's the pit bull that causes public hysteria. Since 1989, when one ripped off the face of an eight-year-old girl, the breed has been banned within county lines. Pretty much ever since, advocates have argued that pit bulls are only as dangerous as their owners, and that the ban itself is classist, since people from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds tend to own them.

But none of this ever affected Nizama growing up. She wanted a ferret like her childhood friend had. So she bought one for herself, and when she relocated to New York, she didn't pay the ban much mind. "It's not illegal for vets to look at ferrets," she explains. "It's pretty easy to get around the law." Even when she wanted to get a second one, all she had to do was call a pet store in Long Island, just outside NYC city limits.

In 2012, she formed the Ferret Club of New York City and started flyering pet shop bulletin boards. She quickly found a compatriot in Isis Vera, who got into ferrets growing up when her father's coworker's daughter didn't want hers anymore. "And from there, one ferret became two ferrets, and then when I went to college I became the ferret person," Vera told me

Vera and Nizama were bolstered by the promise of new Mayor Bill de Blasio, who many thought would be on the side of the nonhuman animals. During his campaign, he vowed to end carriage rides in Central Park, a cause backed by some animal rights supporters. Friends of Animals, an international advocacy group, called him "NYC's First Mayor for Animal Rights." And last year, the New York Times reported that a repeal of the ferret ban seemed imminent under his leadership.

But old arguments—and what some would call prejudices—began to complicate things. Much like pit bulls in Nizama's native Miami, ferrets have become associated with violence toward children. In 2011, for instance, a ferret ate seven of a baby's fingers in Missouri. And in January, one ate a baby's nose outside of Philadelphia. "The parents, I believe, have problems," the local police chief told he the Delaware County News at the time. "They can't take care of these kids."

No matter whether it was human or beast at fault, it seems like the Board of Health was influenced in part of these grisly media accounts. The argument against them was focused on the animals' "unique skeletal structure," which would allow them to escape from apartments and—presumably—eat a baby's face.

"I have to say that, at this point, I'm not at all convinced that it wouldn't be a substantial health risk to allow ferret ownership in New York City," Dr. Lynn Richardson, a member of the Board of Health, concluded last week.

Nizama says this line of reasoning is ridiculous. Holding up a toy that her ferrets like to burrow inside of, she shows how big an opening there would have to be to facilitate an escape. "You'd have to have a really fucking large hole in your house [for a ferret to get through]," she says. "You'd have bigger problems than ferrets at that point."

To vent, Nizama is planning a bit of rebellious fun. Today she's having a St. Patrick's Day celebration at which people will bring their ferrets from all over the city to socialize. But after the party's over, it's right back to organizing an appeal for next year. There are about 400 members of the Ferret Association of New York, and none of them takes the issue lightly.

"We want to go to Central Park with our ferrets, we want to go to Coney Island and bring them to the beach," says Vera. "We just want some peace of mind in owning ferrets."

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