Story time: Frodo's Great Escape

*Disclaimer: I realise that my 'rescue' of Frodo was not as heroic or dramatic as it could've been and he was perfectly happy to continue waddling along if I hadn't intervened.*


Everyone sitting comfortably? Ok, here we go! It was a normal Saturday in March, sunny enough to not need a jacket but warm enough to wear jeans. I was meeting my friends in town to do a little bit of shopping before I had work in the afternoon. And I was running late, as always. I finally made it out the house 5 minutes before I was due to meet my friends and they were at least a 15 minute drive away.

As I pulled up to the end of my road, there was a learner driver reversing around the corner, as there always is! But I waited patiently behind them, despite my annoyance, and as I was just glancing ahead, something caught my eye on the pavement opposite the junction. At first, I thought I was seeing a brown paper bag floating in the wind, but as I glanced back, I realised it was in fact, an animal of some description.

Now at this point, I'd had a pretty dull few months; my rabbit had died, all my friends were at uni and I was using my time up by working full time. So at the mere suggestion of an adventure unfurling, I got extremely over-excited and got out my car.

As I did this, the driving instructor of the car in front also got out, to which we shared a bewildered look and approached the moving brown paper bag. It was at this point that my eyes adjusted and I deciphered that the brown paper bag was in fact a wandering ferret. But not just that, a ferret with three legs! To me, a person who has little to no experience with this particular animal, assumed he was injured as he was limping across the pavement.

I immediately ran across the road to where he was wobbling along, and being very wary that he could be aggressive or scared, I crouched down about a meter away and held out my hand as an offer to test his behaviour. Turns out he was a very, very friendly ferret and came straight up to me sniffing all over.

Still unsure whether I should pick him up or not, unsure if his limp had been caused by an injury from his escape and therefore, apprehensive to hurt him more if I did pick him up, I followed him up the path of someone's front garden and through their metal fence to their back garden! It was at this point that I conversed with the driving instructor who was with me by the fence, and I decided to run home and grab a box to collect him in to take him to someone who could help him get back home.

I ran the 20 second stretch home, upturned the box we keep by the door to collect our recycling, dumping the cardboard and empty cans in an untidy heap on the floor, shouted to my dad to come and help and ran back to the driving instructor who was still awkwardly standing by the gate, keeping an eye on our new friend.

With my dad now in tow, we knocked on the house of a kind elderly lady, who allowed us into her garden after our bizarre revelation that a ferret was loose. I managed to scoop him from behind her dustbin into the recycling box, and laid my shirt over the top, carefully carrying him to my dad, ecstatically exclaiming "I FOUND A FERRET"

The driving instructor, thoroughly helpful whilst retaining this ferret, apologised but the guy he was having a lesson with was actually on his way to take his driving test and they needed to go. So they swiftly drove off after passing the responsibility of the ferret over to myself and Dad. It was at this point that I moved my car from the middle of the road, where I abandoned it hurriedly as I originally saw the ferret, out of the way.

Now I've been told that ferrets are escape artists. To which we experienced immediately after capturing him in the box; he slipped right back out. I then chanced picking him up, still not sure if he was tame or not. But he was absolutely fine! A bit wriggly… by which I mean, very wriggly. But even so, at least I had him in some sort of restraint. As you can tell from my selfie, I was struggling with just one hand.

Dad and I then confused about what to do with a ferret we had just found, and were now responsible for, knocked on our neighbour's door who works in the council, as he has a good knowledge of many people who live close by, to see if he knew of any locals who owned ferrets. Down the adjacent road to us, we knew of a family who owned ferrets a few years ago. So it turned into a very bizarre door-to-door where I appeared, holding my new furry friend, asking: "have you lost a ferret?" The responses were understandably confused.

We eventually deciphered that he was not from our road, and so took him home. I put back together an old cage with some sawdust from when I used to keep rabbits and did a bit of googling to see if I could offer him anything to eat or drink without poisoning him. (Please note that I had no prior experience with keeping, handling or feeding ferrets whatsoever.)

We decided that posting on Facebook would probably be the quickest and easiest way to get him back home, so I posted a status, asking people to share it. After giving him a bowl of water, I had a new mission to buy him some adult dog food to eat and I finally left to go and meet my friends.

I texted a quick message before I set off, "I've found a ferret. Sorry I'm late. Will explain later"

As time passed, the more I discovered that handling a ferret for half an hour allows their scent to pass onto yourself. So as I greeted my friends in town, who were miffed that I was late, all due to me trying to be a hero and rescue a ferret, my smell wasn't particularly forgiving either.

People were tagging their friends who owned ferrets, people who owned ferrets were giving me advice, and people were even congratulating me on my find! My friends fed up of my repetitive story as I was unable to stop blabbering on about my new companion and all the updates on my status, were glad when I had to rush home to get changed for work, running late again.

As I made my way back to the car park, a comment popped up on my status. A lady giving me the details of her friend who she was sure he belonged to, so I rang the number straight away.

Turns out the lady lives approximately 100 meters from my address and both her ferrets had escaped that morning as she had had builders in who had accidentally left the door open.

She was on her way to collect her first lost ferret, who had been found and kept safe by RSPCA, and asked us to keep him safe until she could get to ours. When I arrived home, Frodo, (we finally knew his name!) who we’d been calling ‘Tripod’ due to his missing leg, was fast asleep, curled up into a ball in the sawdust. He must have been worn out from his big adventure!

As I needed to leave to get to work, I used a flannel to attempt to wipe the scent of my cuddles with Frodo off me, changed my clothes and waited for his owner to collect him.

Now this is the power of “word of mouth”. When his owner arrived, she explained that as she was riding her horse that afternoon, she’d bumped into an old friend, who she’d actually fallen out with recently, but the friend mentioned my status, which she had seen shared that day, and knew that she used to keep ferrets. When the woman returned home to her lack of ferrets, asked the friend/ex-friend to tag her on the status, ended up sending me her phone number which I rang.

I awoke Frodo up from his nap, his tired bleary eyes caught sight of his mum and his excitement was palpable. I am so grateful that we were able to keep him safe and return him home within a few hours! The power of social media is absolutely crazy and I will forever be astounded by how small this world actually is.

For those of you who know me, I am a rabbit person through and through, but maybe my heart has been opened up to the possibility of potentially owning a ferret one day!

I’m not sure if there is a moral to this story. Except that you never know what life is going to throw at you, you just have to be open to the idea that adventure could be just around the next corner. And finding, rescuing and interacting with Frodo was exactly what I needed at that moment in time.