Move Over, ‘Meerkat Manor’

Nocturnal, ferrets come out after dark to hunt for prairie dogs, their main source of food. With Livieri at the wheel of his pickup truck, we bounced down rutted dirt roads alongside the prairie dog colonies that fill the Conata Basin—a federal grassland near Badlands National Park. Researchers find ferrets by shining a spotlight on the moonscapelike setting of a prairie dog town. From dusk until nearly dawn we sat in Livieri's truck—two dudes looking for weasels. Nobody said science was sexy.

After three days in Wall, where the highlight is visiting the famous Wall Drug Store, I could hardly leave town fast enough. I returned home and wrote the story for the Summer 2005 issue of Defenders magazine, which detailed how ferrets in the Conata Basin were being threatened by a federal effort to poison prairie dogs.

Had I known that my text would one day appear in a romance novel, I might have sexed up my story: "Hot-loving polecats do it in prairie dog holes." Instead, here's the passage where I detail the life history of black-footed ferrets. You may recognize it.

"Black-footed ferrets, so-named because of their dark legs, weigh about two pounds and measure two feet from tip to tail. Related to mink and otters, they are North America's only native ferret (and a different species than the ferrets kept as pets). Their closest relatives are European ferrets and Siberian polecats. Researchers theorize polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska to establish the New World population. The animals breed in March and April, when males roam the night in search of females. Mothers typically give birth to three kits in June, and raise their young alone in abandoned prairie dog burrows.

"Ferrets stalk and kill prairie dogs during the night. Using their keen sense of smell and whiskers to guide them through pitch-black burrows, ferrets clamp a suffocation bite on their sleeping prey—an impressive feat, considering that the two species are about the same weight. Coyotes, badgers and owls in turn prey on ferrets, whose lifespan in the wild is often less than two years. 'It's a tough and quick life,' Livieri says."

Edwards even has Shadow Bear mouth the quote by Livieri—who is a nice guy but by no means a loincloth-wearing love machine. I called Edwards at her home in Mattoon, Ill., and reached her husband, who told me neither would make any statements about the situation based on the advice of an attorney and editors. Absent an explanation from Edwards, I can only guess at how my words ended up in "Shadow Bear." I surmise that, looking for some description of the animals of South Dakota, Edwards did a Google search, found my story and simply cut and pasted. Such cut-and-paste plagiarism is rampant in college and high-school research papers, according to teachers and professors. Just how widespread it is in nonfiction remains to be seen.