Very good point!
It looks like a change to my script should be doable, but the impact may have to be limited to NICs that show "status:" lines in ifconfig. Some, like
ne(4), do not report status. If you have suggestions for those NICs, I'll take 'em.
(If you'd like to play with the script, it's in /etc/rc.local -- note that /etc is one of the MFS mounted directories, populated from /backups/etc.tar.gz.)