March 1999

01.03.99

I got another rescue in today. A man called me in the evening and said he found a ferret in his shed and asked what to do with it so I said I'd come out. I took my neighbour Dominic with me, he's 12. The drive was over an hour and it was sooo foggy but we found the place alright, it was a beautiful spot where the people had their smallholding and they were a very nice young couple. First we went into their shed and the hob was curled up under a shelf in some hay. I was glad he wasn't a wild polecat, in the car Dominic and I had joked around like "Please, let it be a ferret and not a polecat and let it be a nice ferret and make sure it's still there. Anything else???" I thought it couldn't be a polecat as they're wild and wouldn't sleep in a shed and let humans feed them. The hob woke up when I carefully poked him, stretched and yawned and let me pick him up. He was really well behaved and I held him and asked the couple if they had a drink for him before we left. They invited us into the house and we started chatting and also had a nice cup of tea, if only all rescues could be so nice! :-) I held the hob on my lap for over an hour while we talked, he slept half the time and the other half he chewed my hand. He could probably smell the other ferrets, especially the whole girls (Vicky and Tricky). The most amazing thing was that the couple said they'd just been to my web site! After finding the ferret and not knowing much about them, they went on the Internet and searched for "Ferrets + Wales" and my pages were one of the first to come up so that was such a cool coincidence. It's amazing the things that sometimes happen. The man also had a digital camera and took pictures of me and the hob and of Dominic and the hob, he sent me 3 of them.

I couldn't handle the hob much as he grabbed my hands and tried pulling them away with him all the time, he smelt the girls on me and probably mistook my hands for a jill...

I let him have run of the house while he was here and one day I was looking for him after I hadn't seen him for a while and he'd gone to sleep on my bed. Nothing wrong with that but you should've seen him! He was lying on his back, all limbs spread out, I'd folded my duvet in half and he was lying the wrong way round and had his upper body on the duvet like he was using it for a pillow. Any ferret would curl up but the way he laid there was just sooo hilarious! I took a picture of him and will put it here as soon as I have my photos developed.

These are two of the pictures that the man took:

This is the picture I took when the hob was asleep on my bed... ;-)

04.03.99

So I didn't have the hob for a long time. A college class visited me not long ago to find out about ferrets, the students did a small animal course. And one of the girls fell in love with my big boys and said if I ever got a big hob in, she would love one. So she got the hob and she was so happy when she saw him, he was a very handsome boy though... I would've kept him if I had less ferrets. He had such a smashing personality and a lovely broad head and neck and was so well built. Anyway, I'm glad he went to a good home.

15.03.99

Had a call this morning, a man phoned to say that he was looking for a new home for his 2 hobs. He goes abroad on business a lot and is probably moving abroad and nobody wanted his ferrets. So I said that I take in unwanted ferrets.

The man came late afternoon, he left the ferrets and their hutch though I took the ferrets out of their hutch and put them in my big sideboard cage- their hutch was far too small for them, they are *huge*!!! The boys are friendly though, they'd been handled a lot, were pets and their owner had them neutered so they were very well looked after. They are both polecat colour. 18 months old. Shouldn't be hard to re-home them.