Man kicked out of mall because of seizure detecting ferret

Tim Hull says he's suffered from quiet seizures for years, until now. And he thinks it is all due to Bella the ferret. This ferret, he says, isn't his pet. It's his service animal.

"'It's a ferret, it's an animal. It's a pet, it's a rat.' That's basically the first thing I feel that people think when they come across her. They look at her and she's in a buggy, they think 'Well, that's just a pet and they are spending money on that pet'," said Tim Hull when he described the usual reaction to his service animal.

Hull insists the calm that Bella brings him prevents his seizures. He and his wife also says Bella can detect when a seizure is coming. "She senses his seizures, his sugars, and calms him down to where he doesn't have it," says Leann Hull, Tim's wife.



Leann Hull says when a seizure episode does happen, Bella alerts her, "She'll start making a sound like, 'cuh, cuh'." Leann says Tim's seizures are silent, and without Bella, she wouldn't know if he was in trouble. But none of that mattered when the couple went to the mall recently. Tim and Leann said Hanes Mall management asked them to leave when they couldn't produce proof that Bella was a service animal.

Hanes mall declined to comment, but says it has rules about bringing animals onto mall property. Service animals are allowed. The Hulls say it was a violation of their rights when mall workers asked for papers proving Bella's abilities.

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act a service animal is a dog or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability. According to the ADA, a person with a disability is not required to carry registration or proof that his/her animal is a service animal.

With news video.