Ferret Rescue

Ready to head off to work yesterday, I opened the bedroom curtains and running along the pavement outside the houses opposite was a ferret. What? A ferret. A woman walking past looked at it in disbelief as it flumped by. It stopped under a parked car, then headed back up the street behind her. Then someone on my side of the street caught its attention and it crossed the road. She had a large dog - a labrador, and the little critter was right in its face, and the dog didn't like it! These dogs are retrievers of dead birds, not hunters. It was clearly more scared than the ferret!

So I ran downstairs to see what was going on, and decided this poor little guy was an escaped pet and I better catch him using my super animal skills. I grabbed a plastic recycling box and jumped out. At that point my neighbour Kate appeared and wondered what was going on. By now the ferret was behind her shed in the side alley next to mine. Now Kate is scared of mice. And rats. And giant rat-like animals. Including ferrets. She bravely tried to shoo it out from behind her shed with a broom, but it ran back towards my back garden.
I ran through the house to try and catch it there. But by the time I got there, it had run towards the street again. I did wonder what the local alley cats would have made of it, but they never saw it.

Now Kate was trying to get it into the street again, and it jumped into the yard next to mine. I followed it in, and he was very tame, just looking around, nosing into flowerpots and eventually walked up to me. I grabbed him (I was wearing one of my work gloves) and took him out of the yard. Kate was now in the middle of the street - she'd rather be run over than approach a mustelid, it seems. I asked her to get the lid of the box and she handed it to me at a very stretched arm's length. I popped the little feller in and snapped the lid shut.

He scratched the box a bit, but I got him indoors and he settled down. Now what to do? I looked on the RSPCA web site and called their advice line, but after five mins on hold I gave up and called a local veterinary. They told me that if I brought him (or her, I don't know how to sex a ferret) in they would check for a chip and try and find its home. So I popped a note on my front window (Found! Ferret!), packed him up into the back of the Land Rover and trundled round to the vet's.

The vet told me it was a very nice polecat ferret, and that they'd keep me informed. I drove back home and cycled off to work.

When I got home that evening there was a note through the door. "Pan" belonged to the family a few doors down, so I went and told them where he was and they very nicely gave me a couple of jars of home-made jam for my troubles, and a jar to give to Kate for being brave.

 The next morning I snapped this picture as Cathy came back from the vets with him. I hope he doesn't get out again!