I am a Sugar Glider, a small gliding possum. I am called
a Sugar Glider because I like to eat nectar, although I
also eat pollen, the sap produced by wattle and gum trees,
and insects. My official name is Petaurus breviceps and
I am somewhere in between my relatives, the tiny Feathertail
Glider and the Greater Glider, in size - about 120 grams
in weight, and 170 mm body length when fully grown.
But this is me when I was just three months old, and only
weighed 40 grams. I had only been out of my mother's pouch
a few days. I used to live in a colony of sugar gliders
in a banana plantation, until one day the farmer came to
cut down the banana plant that we were living in. My family
members fled for safety and in the chaos, I lost my mother.
Luckily, the banana farmer found me, together with my brother,
in our nest and handed us over to the Tweed Valley Wildlife
Carers.
We sugar gliders are social animals who like to live with
lots of other gliders. The wildlife carers knew this and
tried really hard to find a replacement family for my brother
and me. At first, we started off with just the two of us,
but by the time we were ready to face the world on our own,
there were five of us living together. The other three gliders
were orphaned too, and all were too young to fend for themselves,
although some were a little older or younger than my brother
and me. While we were in care, we were fed a special milk
formula and nectar mixture for possums, and as we got older,
we were introduced to all the native vegetation that we
love to eat.
In our large aviary on the edge of bushland, we got bigger
and stronger, and started to learn how to glide. We Sugar
Gliders have a membrane - a flap of skin - which extends
on each side of our bodies from our front to hindlegs. We
can leap at least 50 meters from tree to tree by spreading
this membrane. That's why we're called gliders.
When I was about 8 months old, the five of us were released.
It was a "soft" release - a small door on the
aviary was left open, and a rope extended from it to nearby
acacia trees. We could come back for food and sleep in our
nestbox, as we wished. And we did come back for a little
while, until we felt sure enough in the big wide world.
After a week though, we stayed where we belonged - in the
bush.
Article by Sue Johnson
