In early May 2005, the shelter that gave us Bug and Boo called to see if I would be interested in taking another ferret, a sweet three-year old girl. After a short internal debate, I was. Natasha's three years old.

A girlfriend bought her as a present for a boyfriend. The couple broke up. The boyfriend found a new girlfriend. She didn't want him to have any reminders of his past relationship, so Natasha was taken to the shelter, along with her nice big cage, her litterbox, her food, her hammock, her hanging tunnel, her special ferret cuddlycup bed, her jingle bell balls and her stuffed mousie.

To all appearances she was loved and well-tended. She was just thrown away. Ths is more disturbing than what happened to Bug and Boo; they at least were leaving a bad situation. But someone seems to have cared for Tasha, only to discard her like a favorite shirt or old toy.

She's very docile and gentle and well-socialized, and won't bite down or grasp with her teeth at all when she plays. She doesn't know what Bug and Boo are, and has trouble playing with them as they play kind of rough and they do bite down. She likes the big ugly ferrets, monkeys, whatever those furless pinkish things are, though.

As gentle as she is, she's successfully colonized Boo's favorite hidey-hole and he doesn't seem to be allowed back there any more. But occasionally I have found her snuggled up with Boo, and once or twice with Bug, as well.

I wrote a letter in July, 2005 to send pictures and news about the current gang to the shelter that had adopted them all out to us. It makes a little picture of Tasha and her friends, although its somewhat redundant with the info on this site.

She was the bravest little ferret about the puppy, and got him trained to play nice with ferrets. To her, he was just some othe rweird furry thing, same as Bug and Boo.

She died October 26, 2009. Joey knows she's gone and seems depressed, although he hadn't had much to do with her the past couple of years - since she's been sick. She survived 20 months with insulinoma.