Kindergarten Cop and Ferrets

I watched the movie "Kindergarten Cop" yesterday while grading my students' quizzes. It's a cute movie. Highlights include an actual line of German as spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger and a ferret.

Speaking of ferrets, there are a number of problems with the portrayal of all things related to ferrets in this movie.

1) Schwarzenegger's character is supposed to be a cop in Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA! California is one of the states that bans ferrets as pets, because someone was afraid that these 'wild animals' would go ferral and eat babies or something.

2) The two cops fly from LA to Oregon, but Schwarzenegger's partner doesn't know about the ferret until after it crawls out of a backpack in the rental car. In order to take a ferret on an airplane, you need to put it into a plastic carrier and pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $50/animal. It would have been hard for the partner to overlook the carrier at checkin, and as far as I know, security would stop you from bringing in an animal in your backpack, not to mention the radiation damage that an X-ray could cause... (hmm...I wonder if you could use animals to smuggle drugs by forcing little balloons with crack in them down the poor dear's throat?)

3) So, relating back to the last item, yes, you can carry a ferret in a backpack with no problem, however, in a car, you should really have it in a carrier, belted in while driving. Imagine if the little dear were to crawl under the gas/brake pedal!

4) After realizing that he needs backup in dealing with the children, Schwarzenegger runs out to his car and grabs the ferret. What kind of horrible ferret owner would leave his animal in the car all day??? Bad!

5) Schwarzenegger brings the ferret into the classroom without a harness, bell, leash or anything. The little bundle of fur would be gone in a flash, tearing through the toys, defecating in the corner, and sleeping under the rug!

6) For the firedrill, the students are shown taking the ferret out of its 'cage'. This consists of one handheld plastic grocery basket with another one upended over it. Yeah right! No ferret would be confined by that, and even if it could be, that's an extremely cruel lack of space!

7) Finally, the ferret saves the day by biting the bad guy. It seemed like a pretty mild-mannered ferret. I supposed it might bite under stress, but I don't know. (I doubt that Chaos would bite...Fuzzball probably would.) Either way, images of ferrets biting are not what the non-ferret owning community needs as a first exposure.