Ferret behavior question?

Question
3 days ago my mom and i found a ferret underneath one of our vehicles. We live on 10 acres out in the country back away from people so we're pretty sure someone just released the ferret so it can be "free". It is fairly common in this area for people who have exotic pets like ferret, rabbit, rat etc, that they don't want anymore to just release them in the woods so they can be "free" and go back to their "natural" environment. Our dogs were trying to kill the ferret, but luckily we got to it in time. We put it in a spare bedroom in my house until we could decide what we were going to do with it. We don't have an animal control or shelter in my county where i live so the only options we had was to try and find the owner, rehome, or keep the ferret. We are fairly sure we know who the owner is, but that person doesn't take care good care of his animals at all so we feel that the only options that we have are to either give it away or just keep it. We've decided to just go ahead and keep the ferret because we're afraid that who ever we rehomed it to wouldn't treat it well. Now we know basically nothing about ferret or their behavior and a ferret would have probably been one of the last animals i would have pick to have, but sometimes things just work out weird sometimes i guess. Now i've been readings whatever i can find about ferrets and talking to people i know who owners them. I've not ever handled a ferret or seen how they interact so the behavior i'm going to ask about may just be normal play behavior, but i figured i would just ask to make sure. I left the ferret alone free to rome in the room by itself to give it time to settle. I left a couple different types of cat food in there for it to eat since it was all i had. But i has mainly been eating felidae and and from what i've been able to find it meets the protein, fat, fiber percentage needed in ferret food so i may stick with that food. Sorry for putting some much background and info, but i want you to have this just incase any of this may be causing or influencing the ferret's behavior.

The first 2 days the ferret would come up to me and i would stand still and let the ferret smell my shoe and let it make the move. I didn't want to scare it and plus i'm not really sure about their different behaviors. The ferret would follow me around the room and it even let me pet it a few times when it was eating or drinking some water. Sometimes it would jerk back but i would hold my hand still and let it smell my hand and it would relax after smelling my hand. I've not pickup or really handled the ferret yet, but i did try to look it over while i was petting it just to make sure the dogs didn't do any type of damage before we got to it. I couldn't find any wounds except a little scab on the back of neck. Now here is where my question comes in. Last night and today when i would go in and check on the ferret if it was awake it would come up to me like usual and smell my both feet, but then started biting and kept on biting my shoe. It did this last night and today. Now last night when i was checking on it our dogs did start barking outside and the ferret may have smelt the dogs on my shoe and remembered what had happened with the dogs before. But when i was checking on it today it came up and smelt my left shoe first and my right and it sit there a couple of second. Then it smelt my left shoe again then it starts to bite the tip of my shoe. It stopped biting for maybe 2-3 seconds and then started again and would not stop. My question is does this sound like normal behavior? From what i've been able to read its not. The ferret hasn't tried to bite me anywhere else but my shoes. But then again i've not really petted it much and when i did i had gloves on to be on the safe side. I think it may be doing this because of the environment and it may have been mistreated. I know that it hasn't been well taken care of because it if pretty skinny. Sorry for the long draw out info and question but i want to give some background just incase it maybe be something i'm doing that is upsetting the ferret and i just don't realize it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Answer
First off, it is wrong to release pets to be "free", so do not do that if you feel as if you can no longer keep the ferret. There should be some type of animal shelter in your area. Ferrets are domesticated animals, and absolutely cannot survive on their own. High quality cat food for now is fine, however, if you wish to keep him, I would encourage you to feed him a good ferret food, like 8 in 1 Totally Ferret or Marshall's. Keep looking up ferrets on the internet, a good book to get is Ferrets for Dummies, it covers everything. As far as him biting your shoes, most ferrets have some type of foot fetish. They especially like to chew on rubber. This is nothing out of the norm, simply take your shoes off around him if you don't want him to chew on them. You can also hold and handle him a lot, he sounds very tame. Ferrets are generally very affectionate and like to be held and played with. Good luck, I hope you get him a good cage and all the supplies he needs, I'm sure you'll find ferrets make terrific pets, here's some links to help you out:

http://www.ferretcentral.org/faq/

http://www.ferret.org/links/shelters.html

http://www.ferretcentral.net/index.php?categoryid=9&s=5216c757befcae8c31d92559ae...