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Dander Zone: Sugar Gliders are for Friendly Pervs
by Andrew Hume
Sugar gliders are the only Australians I know that aren’t rugged alkies. They don’t wear tan vests or long, oiled slickers, either. And they don’t speak English like one would imagine a smart horse might. Sugar gliders don’t speak English at all, in fact. However, in my research I’ve learned that these curious marsupials share at least one characteristic with their continental brethren: it’s bad if they have parasites in their feces.
If you have a pet sugar glider, that’s one of the first things the vet will check to make sure the little fur factory is in good shape. Parasites in the turds indicate parasites in the belly. And parasites in the belly mean that you gotta share lunch. And sharing lunch means recess is going to suck because you won’t be all wired on pudding enough to spin around, chase skirts/pants or make up new cusses like “dick wastrel” and “fart splitter”.
Sugar gliders have become fairly popular pets in the US. They’re easy to care for and are clean animals. They like to cozy up in shirt pockets, emerging only when no one’s present, to voice little bits of insight. You (an eco-warrior youth with uncanny hidden magical abilities and a predilection for social discomfort) frequently run into philosophical dilemmas and pull him out at your locker for some advice. Or a terrible bald scientist attempts to bulldoze the rainforest. Sometimes you will be deep in the rainforest with the sugar glider and come upon a secret assembly of the bad scientist and his large, dopey thugs. But dang it! They’re too far away to make out what they’re saying! So Bedallion (your sugar glider) says, “Hey, boss, this one’s on me.” And he puts on tiny neon sunglasses and a miniature red Yankees cap and spreads out his skin flap for you to throw him in the direction of the bad dudes (like a furred airplane), where he will listen, undetected. Unfortunately, it’s illegal to have pet sugar gliders in California, which is a real bitch because we have some serious ecological troubles that would be just right for a gloomy, pint-sized magician and his hip, flying hamster.
They’re legal in Colorado, however, and I used to know the quintessential sugar glider owner. This dude was some kind of engineering genius that liked acid a whole lot and had various crazed voices he’d use throughout the day to explicate the tone
of whatever story he was telling at the time. He was super friendly –smiling largely, literally all the time. I can still hear his goofy, clown giggle because he used it a lot. He had a contagious enthusiasm that made me consider enjoying jungle music for awhile there. And he’d bring the sugar glider everywhere. “Look, man, he thinks I’m a tree,” he’d say as the wide-eyed fella climbed up his face at a party.
His girlfriend’s roommate told me that she’d heard that he liked to dance around in his girlfriend’s underwear. Which actually turned out to be the roommate’s underwear, as it was later discovered that his girlfriend had been stealing from her roommate. (Weird, huh?) But Steve didn’t know the panties hadn’t been his girlfriend’s all along. He was simply too preoccupied with his personal joy to take a look at the tags. I imagined him prancing around the room, Keoki blaring on the stereo, a big Chewbacca mask on his head, and the little sugar glider tucked comfortably in the waistband. These are the kinds of people that especially enjoy sugar gliders. I think he thought of it as a small attempt to reconnect with the savagery of human history.
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Volume 2, Issue 2 contents |
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