Ships were made for sinking, whiskey made for drinking

They couldn't heal the squirrel.

At the wildlife center there is a small sort of zoo representing mostly animals that they've rescued. Most of the animals are ones native to Michigan, with a handful that were exotic pets that had to be taken to competent care once their owners realized that exotic pets are hard. (Not all. One was a deer, if I remember right, taken on a vacation by its owners, who were stopped for some kind of traffic violation by a police officer who noted that no, you can't just take deer from the wild and make them your pets.) I'm not sure what the coyote's story was.

Besides exotic pets taken in there were a lot of injured birds. Probably broken or poorly-healed wings was the most common cause of an animal's being at the shelter, with ``acclimated to humans'' the close second. They all looked to be in good condition, though, and we noticed at one raptor's enclosure a chipmunk that ran out of the cage, across the walkway, and hopped up on the fence and kept on going. The birds didn't seem to have noticed the chipmunk at all.

There was a ``Ferret House'', marked with a sign naming it that and warning ``We May Bite!'', although we didn't see any ferrets in there. Possibly they were sleeping, as there's several boxes in which the animals could hide. Or they might have been out working, as some of the animals do go out on educational expeditions, which is why Woody the groundhog --- the official state groundhog at that --- wasn't there that day. They did have a mink, prowling around behind a sign warning ``Mink Will Bite!'', so that's pretty much a ferret experience too.

There would seem to be a little mystery why ferrets would be at the center, though: ferrets have been legalized a good while in Michigan so even if they had been taken as illegal exotics back in the day, surely a willing home could've been found by now? Unless they were too liked by the staff to find a home for, or are too good being shown in educational programs. Also mysterious: they had a domestic rabbit, in an enclosure beside the ferrets. It's easy to imagine an idiot releasing a domestic rabbit into the wild, and the rabbit being rescued from there, but why would the rabbit have been un-placeable? I don't mean to sound snarky. Possibly the rabbit's a good educational-program animal.

Trivia: In summer 1871 Louis Pasteur located a large-size beer plant, which producing 500 million hectoliters of beer annually, used a hundred horses, and employed 250 people, for his experiments in commercial manufacture of beer by his methods. Source: Louis Pasteur, Patrice Debré, Translated by Elborg Forster.

Currently Reading: Revolutionary Russia 1891 - 1991: A History, Orlando Figes.