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The Sugar Glider
The other night Sidney and Stella (our newly-weds) came in with the most adorable silky-grey animal. After dark, the cat had brought it from the bush, and although it had already expired, it captured our children's imagination at once.
At first we could not work out what it was. Some kind of baby possum? A miniature flying squirrel? Then our eleven-year-old, Julian, remembered hearing of sugar gliders. We looked it up, and right on!
With a delicate fold of skin (a patagium) from their littlest finger to their biggest toes, sugar gliders can swoop and dive from one tree to another -- up to 150 metre lengths -- using their bushy tails as rudders.
Sleeping during the day, sugar gliders hunt insects, small vertebrates, the sweet sap of gum trees and wattle pollen to feast on by night. They got their name from an inborn attraction to sweets.
Sugar gliders, in the wild, live only along the east coast of Australia (including Tasmania), in New Guinea and some islands of Indonesia. But people around the world have discov-ered what delightful pets they make, with their quick intelligence, their ability to learn and adapt to all sorts of situations, and above all, their winsome looks.
Some time ago a lady with a miniature sugar glider (above) visited the Altona community in America. She had kept it for seven years, getting much enjoyment from it -- all the better, after paying six hundred dollars for it, at a pet shop. In some states and countries, including Australia, one cannot keep the little animals legally. This for fear that hunters would devel-op a trade in capturing and selling them. As of now they are not endangered, and quite common in our part of the world. Only, for their nocturnal ways, notoriously hard to spot.
Notice the two fused toes on the sugar glider's back foot. They are not deformed. They are simply the fine-toothed comb God provided them with to keep their silky coats clean.
Our daughter, Angel, with the sugar glider the cat brought in. So silky, so soft. An animal God made with little girls in mind?
Like us, these marsupials choose to live in community -- up to half a dozen or more fami-lies, with all their little ones, living in one nest. They have their communal order and house-hold activities, collecting food, keeping the nest clean, watching out for danger. Twice a year the mothers have new babies (called joeys), usually two at a time, weighing less than one gram at birth. They ride along in their mother's pouches until they get to the size where they no longer fit in. Then they must take their place as adults in a wild wonderful world.
We thank our Creator for all he made and for placing us, who worship him, in the middle of it.
Peter
Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au.
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