The Story of Mo

Earlier this year, my boyfriend Josh and I decided it would be a good idea to get a sugar glider. For those of you who don’t know what that is and don’t want to use the Google search bar at the top of the screen, a sugar glider is a small marsupial that you can keep as pets. They are adorable and look like this:

This is is HER blueberry. You may not haz it.

They originally come from Australia but the place we got her from apparently raises them in Florida and then just brings them all over the place to adopt them out. They happened to be at the mall near Josh’s house one weekend which lead to this conversation:

Josh: I want one.

Me: Ok.

Josh: No seriously, I want one.

Me: Ok. Let’s do it.
Josh: No you don't understand I've wanted one for like, four years.
Me: Ok, so let's do it then.

Josh: Wha- What? Really?

Me: Yeah we’ll split the cost.

Josh: Awesome! Let’s get one tomorrow.

And so we did. The next day we were off to the mall again as soon as it opened. We pooled the money in our wallets together and managed to scrounge up enough money for a glider and a little extra just in case. When the stand finally opened we were told all they had left were girls.

This is what they would all look like if they had bows on :)

It was our understanding that there wasn’t much difference between them and we were happy to take home a girl. We had even come up with a name for her, Momo, after the lemur from “Avatar the Last Airbender”.

We gave the sugar glider guy the money and he picked one out for us commenting, “She’s on the smaller side but she’s active.” He wasn’t kidding. When we first brought her home we were instructed not to hold her or handle her very much for the first two days. So for two days we kept her in her cage with some clothing that smelled like Josh and I. She alternated from running around the cage in circles like a maniac and burrowing in the mountain of clothes we had provided her on the top of her heat rock.

I'm hiding!

We finally got to the point where we could start taking her out and handling her. We were excited, Momo was not. She clamored in desperation to get away from us. Pushing and biting as hard as she possibly could.  There was a certain way we were told to hold her to help her bond to us more but she was clearly having none of it. It became a huge stress for everyone involved partly due to her still being terrified of us and partly due to our inexperience with her. After a few days our grips got better and she began to mellow out. During this time we decided to try to teach her to stay on us when we had her on us. The way we were told to do this was to put her on a shoulder and constantly walk around a room with tile or hard wood floor. The logic was she couldn’t figure out where she wanted to jump off too if she were constantly moving and if she did decide to make a grand leap of faith she would land on a hard floor which would be ouchy. Trust me it sounds a lot meaner than it actually is, and it’s much better than the alternative of having her jump off and running away somewhere. We chose Josh’s bathroom since it was the only room we could close off that had hard floors. We closed the toilet and took every conceivably dangerous object out in the open and put them away. Josh started with Momo on his shoulder first. He walked around the bathroom in circles while I watched. Momo, who clearly did not enjoy being on this strange human, was scampering from shoulder to shoulder, trying to figure out a way off.

Momo stayed on Josh for a good while, he moved around too much for her to actually lock on anywhere. Finally she began trying to jump off. The first few times she hit the floor and was rather reluctant to try jumping again. Eventually the fear of the bespectacled giant she was attached to would win out and she would make a daring leap, only to land on the floor again. She did this several times in the half an hour we had been in the bathroom. At one point Josh couldn’t get around me fast enough. Momo took this time to leap into the air, right onto my face.

You can't see it but I'm frowning under there.

While she hadn’t landed on the floor she found that what she landed on wasn’t much better. This was a new giant and didn’t seem all that happy with a Momo attached to its face. (There wasn’t much panic in this event I just didn’t expect it and her nails were kind of sharp).  Before I could grab her she ran off my face and onto my shoulder to prepare to launch herself elsewhere. I took Josh’s place and began wandering around the bathroom to keep her on me. Josh in the meantime was looking at all of this in hysterics. When he stopped laughing I looked at him and said “We’re renaming her Heady Lamarr.” Josh said, "no."

Head crabs are from the "Half Life" series which is made by Valve :D

After awhile Momo began to get used to us more and actually started to relax around us. We started introducing her to other people when she was very little and now she’s become very good with meeting people. We’ve had her for a little over seven months now and she’s bonded to us quite well. We now joke that we’re her parents and she’s the baby. She’s become Josh’s little angel.

Twue Wuv. <3 :P

And my little buddy :)