In a class of their own

I DON’T really know how to phrase this — I don’t want to annoy anybody or to end up sounding pedantic or silly. Not everybody realises that there is a time-honoured tradition in the newspaper business that one set of people write the articles and another set write the titles and headlines.

Last Monday I wrote an article about feral ferrets and it appeared under the title: “Ferreting out true numbers of feral rodents.”

Kind people have been phoning and emailing to tell me that a ferret is not a rodent. I actually know this. So, just to clarify things, let’s settle this business of how animals are classified.