About 15 years ago, my brother-in-law called to tell me that he had caught a "wild" and aggressive ferret in a live-trap and asked if I wanted it. Since we already had ferrets, I said that I'd come up and look at that one. It was a sweet little female, and she wasn't the least bit aggressive. When I talked to her, she came to the end of the trap and seemed to invite contact, so I opened the trap and took her out. I held her to my chest and she just curled up in my hands, snuggling in. I put her in a Carry-Kennel with food and water for the ride home, and she kept sticking her nose out at me, sniffing. I talked to her to keep her calm and reached over to touch her nose from time to time to reassure her and let her get my scent. I said "What are we going to call you?" among other things, and "Boy! you sure are nosy!", which seemed to perk her up for some reason. I picked up on that and said "I'll call you Rosie", which she seemed to like, and that's how I introduced her to my wife when I got her home. She and my wife bonded immediately. A couple of weeks later, my sister-in-law called and said that someone in the area where the ferret had been caught had posted a reward notice for a lost ferret. We had assumed that the ferret had belonged to a summer vacationer (lots of camps around that pond) and that we could keep her, but I called the number and a young woman answered the phone. I asked her to describe the ferret and she said that it was a brown sable female, with a thin healed scar near her left eye. With a deep sense of loss, I told her that we had her ferret, and she screamed to her husband and son "They've got Rosie!"
I'll never forget that.
When they showed up, they wanted to pay us for returning their ferret, which we refused. The sight of their little boy cuddling his ferret (who slept with him every night) was too precious for words.