Iniquity.

As the name of my blog implies, I have ferrets. In point of fact, I have thirty of them, of which fourteen are either owner-surrenders, re-homed, or rescue ferrets.

In fact, the ferrets are out, prancing or prowling around my room, or sleeping, as the crew has been out for a good couple of hours now.

Right now my youngest, Aela the Huntress (named after the Skyrim character) is busy attacking my shoe. She's a spunky little ball of energy, a Sable Mitt Sprite with red eyes, a white throat patch and a little white Blaze mark on the top of her head...although she can hear, and is in fact extremely vocal herself. Baby ferrets relate to the world through their mouth, they bite, nip, chew on things, try to eat them. It's what they do, same as a puppy or kitten or most other baby Carnivores for that matter.

Still awake and prowling around is Freya, my Black Roan Mitt Sprite, whose fur has gotten lighter so she's more of a grayish white than the deep silver she once was...though her tail is mostly black and she's retained the silver around her face. She's one of my cage-climbers, and one of the more dominant females.

Joey, one of my Blaze Gibs and an owner-surrender ferret, is digging madly at the blanket that's rolled up under the door to keep ferrets from escaping. It's an olive drab wool blanket, originally of Air Force issue and extremely sturdy. It's still got a hole in it that the ferrets put there so I have to fold it right or they'll dig the hole more. Joey was a bit unsocialized when I first got him just over a year ago, but he's become much more social and made friends...though he still fights with a couple of the other males (Cinnamon Gibs Malik Daoud and Maximus, #AllCinnamonsAreAssholes) regularly, he's become much more social in the last year.

Speaking of, Maximus...who right now is a big fat lump of winter weight, gray starting to mix in with the lighter brown that's the dominant color in his coat (he'll be four next spring) just crawled up in my lap to demand that I rub his ears. He was my first ferret.

There's a pile of ferrets...all older ones who live in the same Ferret Nation Double cage...right by my feet.

All things considered, this is a normal afternoon here.

What I saw trending on Facebook this morning though, was definitely not normal.

Tuesday Night, Ivana Clifford, age 26, of Manchester NH, put one of her roommate's three ferrets in the oven and basically cooked it to death...she said because she was angry and she accused her roommate of stealing from her. Her roommate said that that was not true and that the damn bitch did this because the ferret nipped at her heels. (Spoiler: That's something that ferrets DO. It's Mustelid for "Come on, let's play.") The damn bitch is in jail for lack of a $10,000 CASH bond, and requests to move her to one of the area hospitals for psychological evaluation have been denied, so such will have to be performed at the jail.

Good, as far as I'm concerned she should be under the jail, not in it. As far as I'm concerned, she too should perish screaming in darkness and fire. As I have said many times, I used to be a Christian. This fact instilled in me a belief in justice and a tendency to think that "An eye for an eye" should still apply in certain cases.

This is one of them.

If you wonder why I have 30 ferrets, it's because I want to protect as many of them as I possibly can from assholes like that lady.

If somebody did something like that to one of my ferrets, or indeed to any animal and I caught them and was unable to save it...they'd be the next one going in the oven.

And damn the consequences.

What in the hell is wrong with our country that we have people who basically commit first-degree murder of pets for no goddamned reason?

What is wrong with us that cruelty, extremism, greed, mass murder, racism and all sorts of other things that most people will tell you to your face that they think are wrong...are running so rampant these days?

I'm extremely disgusted with humanity today.

And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. ~Matthew 24:12

Spoiler: It doesn't seem to be the Black people or the brown people or gay people or the Jews or the Liberals or the Muslims that the iniquity is coming from.

Listen, America, if we keep putting up with liars and murderers and nuts and those who encourage the same...we're going to get insanity, lies and murder, every single fucking time.

We need to do better. As far as I'm concerned, creating a society where it doesn't occur to people to put live ferrets in ovens or to kill or maim any animal in such a horrible fashion should be a pretty damned low bar to set.

What the fuck is even wrong with people?