I will share with you advice and stories about my sugar gliders Facehugger and Ryder. I will also put your stories (or advice) here if you send it to me.
I have a male glider named facehugger. He got this name because he would jump on my face and give it a good hugging. From what I hear, it looks similar to the facehuggers from Aliens. This didn't hurt so bad when he was little, but now that he has claws, I do my best to avoid this.
Facehugger loves to play with and climb up string. I attached a rope to the ceiling for him to climb to his hearts content. I had tied a knot at the end of the rope to keep it from unraveling. When facehugger saw this instead of climbing up the rope as I had intended, he attacked the knot and deftly untied it. He didn't stop at that, he started to unravel as much as he could before I could get him away from it. Now I just tie knots in it for him to discover and untie.
Our glider will rush at our cat, Mia, and will sometimes jump on her. The poor kitty not knowing what to make of it, would run away horrified. Update: It seems they have now made friends with each other and will chase each other around. The kitty even lets him cuddle up next to her. She tolerates the gliders, but will still get a little upset if they try to go up to her when she's not asleep.
I finally named my new baby glider. I decided to stick with the Aliens theme and call her Ryder (after Winona). This is also appropriate cause she rides around in my pouch all day.
I took my gliders with me on a week long trip to visit my parents. They slept the through the entire 4 hour drive (in their pouch in a large critter keeper) and seemed quite happy about being put in a new cage. They weren't scared or nervous at all and got used to the new surrounding and people in less than a day. When I got them home they were happy to be back in their old (and much larger) cage. I would only try to travel with gliders that are well-bonded, pouch trained, and used to short trips.
Taking pictures is much harder than I thought. Ryder stays in my pouch the whole time and rarely ventures out (this makes many similar pictures). And I can't keep Facehugger still long enough to avoid getting only a blurry streak. I have managed to take some good pictures, but that was just luck.
The other day I was eating a popsicle and Facehugger ran up and grabbed a chunk out of it but quickly dropped it when he realized it was cold. This didn't stop him from eating it and trying to come back for more. I tried to wrestle him off of me but he was so persistant, I had to go in the other room.
Some good books to get:
Sugar Gliders: A Complete Owner's Manual by Caroline MacPherson
Sugar Gliders As Your New Pet by Dennis Kelsey-Wood
Be careful with small pets like hamsters, gerbils, mice and small snakes & reptiles. If your glider gets a hold of one they will kill it quicker than you can do anything about it. I had a pair of young gerbils until Facehugger killed them (and ate them.) On the other hand, sugar gliders can get along great with animals larger than them (make sure they won't eat your glider though.) I had an extremely tame female rat that Facehugger absolutely loved. He would circle around her and grab her ear with both hands and stick his nose in it (he does that to me too!) Too bad the rat passed away, they were good friends.
Both Facehugger and Ryder will climb up the window blinds, find the pull string, and then raise and lower it for 20 minutes if I let them. When they get to the end of the string where the plastic pull-thingy is, they will stick their noses and hands in it trying to get at the little knot. Sometimes they get it and pull it out, though they haven't managed to untie the knot yet.
4/4/98 I noticed two pinto bean sized lumps in Ryder's pouch. She's a mommy! I am so thrilled! I didn't expect her to have babies so soon, she's only 8 mos. oop. and she's about a month along. (They usually don't mature sexually until 8 - 14 mos.)
Nicknames I have for my gliders:
Facehugger - Hugger, The Hugger, Huggerii, Bugger, Lil Buddy, and What's it.
Ryder - Cutie, Beebees, Honey, HoneyBabee, and Sweetie.
When referring to the both of them, they are called Huggers.
5/19/98 Ryder's babies are OOP! She left them in the care of Facehugger for the first time today. She took this free time to eat and play. I used this opportunity to look in on her babies. One is a girl, the other is a boy!
5/21/98 Ryder let Facehugger babysit while she was let loose to play. Facehugger decided he wanted to play too and left the babies alone in the pouch. They were trying to climb out of the pouch, so I decided to babysit. I got a couple of cute pictures of them before their mom came over to get them. They latched on to her and she took them back to the pouch.
5/29/98 Both the babies now have their eyes open. The little girl opened her eyes on the 23rd and the little boy on the 29th. This means the girl's birthday is March 5th and the boy's is March 11th. (You can determine their birthday by counting back 80 days from when they open their eyes.)
5/30/98 I have decided to call the little girl Pixie and the little boy Gremlin. I had been holding them just before I went to bed and I had a dream in which they were named Pixie and Gremlin.
Books
