A Colorado man had a surprise encounter with the rarest mammal in North America, which he found hiding beneath a table saw in his garage.<\/p>\n
Reese Nettles had gone out to lift weights when he caught sight of a furry face with soft, curious eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked like if you put your hand down he would run right over to you,\u201d Nettles told the Pueblo Chieftain.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
His visitor was a black-footed ferret \u2013 one of the rarest mammals in North America, according to Colorado parks and wildlife (CPW).<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are the odds?\u201d Nettles said. \u201cIt was a really neat experience. To think there are just 605 in the world and to have one in my garage \u2013 it was really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only about 370 black-footed ferrets still live in the wild, the species having fallen victim to a bacterium that is nearly 100% deadly for them and the prairie dogs they hunt.<\/p>\n
An intensive vaccination campaign has been trying to pull the ferrets back from the brink of extinction. In the meantime, populations have been supplemented with a limited supply of captive-bred ferrets.<\/p>\n
A black-footed ferret bred in captivity
\nAn invisible enemy: the battle to save black-footed ferrets from the plague
\nRead more
\nThe ferret found by Nettles was one of nine released two weeks earlier at Walker Ranch in Colorado, where more than 120 black-footed ferrets have been introduced in recent years.<\/p>\n
Nettles guessed he lived five or six miles from the ranch, an impressive distance for a ferret to travel without being noticed by hunters. At first, he thought the animal was a pet. A friend later identified it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know exactly why this black-footed ferret left the colony,\u201d said Ed Schmal, a CPW conservation biologist. \u201cWe put them into prairie dog burrows but they may not stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes they scramble around the colony to find the right home. This one might have gotten pushed out by other ferrets and it went looking for a new home. We really don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nettles\u2019s new friend is the exception, not the rule. CPW said it has only heard of one other black-footed ferret leaving the ranch, and it did not end up in a garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is extremely rare,\u201d Schmal said. \u201cBlack-footed ferrets are nocturnal and extremely shy. For some reason, this one left the colony and was seeking shelter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just glad it appeared healthy, not starving or sick, and we were able to capture it and return it to the colony.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Colorado man had a surprise encounter with the rarest mammal in North America, which he found hiding beneath a table saw in his garage. Reese Nettles had gone out to lift weights when he caught sight of a furry face with soft, curious eyes. \u201cHe looked like if you put your hand down he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":166644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3680,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}