When Lizzie died, Blitzen was left an only ferret. We thought she was bored and lonely and it just seemed wrong to have only one, anyway. In October, a shelter a couple of hours away listed a bonded pair of young ferrets for adoption on Petfinder and we went and got them the weekend of Halloween, 2004.

Turned out they were actually three years old, which is not young for ferrets but of course we brought them home anyway. The idiots who had them before us had named them Tori and Bouncing Betty, but we call our little sable girl Bug and our albino boy Boo. They were very timid at first, and ate and ate and ate like they couldn't believe there would always be more food. They ran at raised voices or sudden moves in their direction. They've recovered from that, and are now normally bossy little weasels. Bug even gives kisses!

They're very sweet, and quite definitely bonded. When Bug gets a chance she washes Boo's ears. And washes them. And washes them. And falls asleep washing his ears. Bug keeps food stashed throughout the apartment, and Joey and Tasha go find it later for snacks. Other than that, she somehow reminds me very much of my Lucyferret - very adventurous and bold, most of the time, and with a particularly imperious facial expression when she wants something. I wish I had had her all her life. I wish it about both of them, really. All of them.

Boo is our thief. He specializes in stealing entire bozes of Kleenex, dragging them into David's closet, and digging out the contents, but he has been known to settle for 1.5 lbs loaves of bread. He's shockingly smart, sometimes, as was Lizzie. Maybe it's a 'bino thing. He hates closed doors, and he knows that you have to get to the doorknob and do something with that to get the doors to open if they're fully shut. He'll climb onto nearby cages or jump and jump amd reach trying to get the doorknobs. Poor guy would probably be terribly frustrated if he found out that he wouldn't be able to grasp the knobs if he could reach them. As it is, he often gives up and works on digging through or under the doors. When he first came to us, Boo wasn't able to climb stairs without stopping a couple of times to rest, and he wasn't fat - he'd just never had any exercise. Now he flows up them quite normally, and often chases Joey up and down them for fun.

Blitzen hated these two, and when she was let out she would try to kill them. We had to rotate playtimes for safety's sake. They continued to flinch if she made the slightest move in their direction and would run and hide from her - quite wisely. The best we could ever get was a brief delay in the onset of Blitzen's mustelicidal mania. Still, after she was dead, I showed them her body so they would know what had happened, and poor Boo nuzzled at her for several minutes, trying to wake her.

Now they have Tasha and Joey, and Tasha has come to accept them as her friends. She'll cuddle up with then sometimes, and Bug especially seems to go out of her way to try to be friends with Tasha.

They've adjusted to Joey, but they play a litle too rough for him (and sometimes vice versa). Boo gets mad and beats him up occasionally when they wrestle. Bug is still somewhat wary, but plays chase and wrestles and tries to clean Joey's ears - her whole head will fit in one of his ears, and he doesn't cooperate, but she keeps trying.

Boo died of insulinoma July 18, 2008. We'd been fighting it with him since Christmas Eve, and just never got a hold agianst it. He was a wonderful friend.

Bug followed September 15, 2009, after toughing out a tumor on her butt, an extra toe (ectually a specific kind of weird tumor), adrenal disease, and insulinoma. The hair never grew back on her hind end, and I took to calling her baldy butt. She was a sweetheart, my little mama Bug.

Bug always reminded me a bit of my Lucy, and made me think of what Lucy might have been like if she'd lived - although Lucy was much more of a people ferret, so maybe not. But Bug has been my record holder, at around 8 years old