Hi Carol.  Is there any chance your ferret may be deaf?  That would
certainly explain some of the fear.
 
On the other hand, I have a young MF ferret who has never been mistreated
in any way, but he is my fraidy ferret.  Any loud noise or fast move
sends him running under the couch.  That's just his nature, skittish.  He
is not much of a biter but he does nip and run trying to entice play.
 
At one point I owned a ferret that I had since about 6 weeks old, he was
a horrible biter, he would latch on to hands, feet what ever.  He had
just never been properly socialized.  The hand and arm biting thing
stopped by the time he was 1, but the toe biting (I mean sinking teeth
in, drawing blood) continued until I invested in good slippers and would
spray my toes with bitter apple.  That slowed him down quite a bit.  He
did stop biting me for the most part, but never stopped biting my
husband.  My philosophy with that was, when Rascal would bite or attempt
to bite, I would calmly pry his teeth off my toe and pick him up and hold
him.  Jim on the other hand would jump, yell and dance around...so Rascal
must have gotten a kick out of that.
[Posted in FML issue 4883]