Thurs 9 June on the way home from an early morning walk the unthinkable happened - my 3 m.o. albino, Allie McFerret, managed to escape through an unseen hole in his new PakaPal, hit the sidewalk & dive into a small hole - and was instantly GONE! As I tried to catch him I fell over a railing, slid down a steep sandy rock embankment & separated my shoulder. This happened at 6am. By 7 the temperature was already approaching 80. Luckily, he crawled under large old quarried stone blocks originally used for old canal locks & dam, now rearranged under a large old stone bridge. There were ferret sized tunnels all over an area the size of baseball field. I spent 14 hrs down there in the 95 degree sun trying to find him and coax him out with food, toys, calls, bedding, litter pan, etc. My parents & fiancee spent much of the day either with me, fetching things, or making & posting flyers. We recieved no support from the authorities or animal services organizations. By the end of the evening I was exhausted, battered & bruised from an entire day sliding down sharp rock inclines while my shoulder was immobilized in a sling. We knew the emergency clinic closed at 8pm so since the pain was unbearable we knew I needed to see the Doc. So we assumed the worst, said our goodbyes, bawled our eyes out, & I placed his fav white stuffed ferret in the only hole we found with evidence of a ferret (his droppings). We went to get me x-rayed & medicated. Throughout the day I stopped to pray for Allie. I prayed he'd be returned to us. I prayed he'd be found by someone else who would love him as much as we did. I prayed he'd die peacefully in his sleep. I prayed for anything but him suffering (starving to death, being maulled by a dog or wild bird/animal, being captured & euthanized by animal control, being swept away in the river or struck by a passing train or car). At 9pm we decided to take one last desperate look around. As we started to descend the ladder we saw two young girls ascending carrying an extremly muddy but happy Allie & the flyer with his photo. They saw him on the other side of the bridge from where he went in, playing in a pool of water doing flips into a dry hole & playing peek-a-boo with them. The one girl thought it was a rat but the other had an interest in ferrets, recognized him as an albino, approached him slowly with her hand out expecting to be bit and was surprised when he came up and started licking her. As she carried him out, the other found the "Lost" flyer we made of him & they were on their way to find a phone to call us when we bumped into them on the stairs. I can't tell you how thankful I am. We got him home, fed him, gave him FerretAid, and bathed him. He had one tick that came off when we put cooking oil over its body. He did not have any fleas or earmites. He did have a lot of reddish gook in his ears, which could be from the red sandstone dust he was rumaging around in. I've never felt this kind of bond towards any animal, nor this level of loss of anyone in my life. I've never bawled so uncontrollably; not when I learned I was going blind, not when my sister went deaf/blind/lame, not when I lost relatives. I told my fiancee, truthfully, that the happiest day of my life was proposing to her & the second happiest was today, me - speechless seeing Allie alive & well again. Not a day has gone by since that I haven't prayed in praise & thanks for little Allie being returned home healthy & safe. "Intelligence is like 4-wheel drive. It allows you to get stuck in more 'remote' places." ~ Garrison Keillor ~ [Posted in FML issue 4924]