Advice to New York City employees who wish to stay employed: Do not ask a welfare recipient to watch your beloved pet ferret.

A caseworker at the city’s Human Resources Administration resigned his job after doing just that, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board said on Tuesday, the latest episode in a long line of municipal controversy wrought by the musky yet misunderstood mammal.

The caseworker, Kempe Hope, exploited his position by soliciting a paid ferret-sitting session from a person whose benefits he was overseeing, the board found.

It was a lesson learned too late for Mr. Hope, who discovered that of all the political pests that can vex public servants, the ferret often leaves the harshest bite.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

After banning pet ferrets in 1999, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani became so incensed about the animals that he accused a ferret advocate of mental illness, describing his yen for the creatures as “deranged.”

Photo

“This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness,” Mr. Giuliani said in an extended rant on his radio program in 2000, later cited by political opponents as an example of unhinged behavior by the mayor. (Ferrets, in fact, are cousins of the weasel, not weasels themselves.)