The Pocket Pets Website

The Pocket Pets logo

                                           
                   Click here to visit the Pocket Pets Website!


            This is the website for the company, Pocket Pets, that my sister and I bought our sugar gliders from. They do not sell baby sugar gliders directly from their website, however they do provide some very useful information for potential buyers and curious individuals.  As I mentioned in my previous entry, my sister and I bought our sugar gliders from Pocket Pets in person when they were visiting the Manchester, New Hampshire mall.
            The Pocket Pets website does sell accessories for sugar gliders; including various cages, pouches, and toys.  The website also sells the Pocket Pets brand of pellet food that has been prove to be a safe and nutritious diet for the exotic sugar gliders.  This is the food that my sister and I feed our little babies.  Pocket Pets also sells additional nutrients, such as vitamins and healthy treats.
            In addition to selling various products for sugar gliders, the Pocket Pets website is a great resource for reliable information about sugar gliders.  The website specifically provides advice about how to interact with your new sugar gliders and how to understand their unique behaviors.  And of course the website also contains many adorable pictures of sugar gliders.

What's in a Name?

As you can probably tell, this entry revolves around the long (and even excruciating) experience that my sister and I had while coming up with a name for our new sugar glider.  As soon as we got in the car for the trip home, my sister and I were bouncing ideas for his name off of each other.  We each came up with a handful of names, but nothing quite fit.  I think the problem was that our new pet was a native of Australia and considered “exotic” and we wanted something that reflected that.  Cue my sister’s fanatical obsession with Australian actress Rebel Wilson; and suddenly our little guy was named after a lady.  Don’t get me wrong I think Rebel Wilson is hilarious, but I by no means thought that Rebel was the name for our little man.  I let my sister know that I did not think that he looked or acted like  “Rebel”, but as much as I wanted to further protest his new moniker, I bit my tongue because “Rebel” was mine and my sister’s pet, not just mine, so I knew that we had to cooperate to make his life with us amazing.

This is one of the very first pictures that we took of our new friend.
Does he look like a "Rebel" to you?

So my sister made it known to our family that his name was Rebel.  But as the next couple of days dragged on she started to have second thoughts; I think my hesitation over the name had finally eaten its way into her thoughts.  I also think that as we got to see more of “Rebel’s” personality, we realized just how little of a “rebel” our little man was.  He was way too sweet of a little guy and had an enormously outgoing personality that in no way reflected his minute size.  My sister and I soon found ourselves back at square one; what were we going to name him?

Eventually, and believe it or not, we settled on one of the very first names that we brainstormed for him; Telly.  Now before you question our sanity, there is a story behind that name.  My family has four other pets on top of our two sugar gliders (the story of sugar glider number two will be told a little later); we have three cats named Tiggir, Leo, and Meowth, and one dog named Koia.  My sister had taken to calling Leo, our only male cat, “Telly” because he reminded her of the Teletubbie creatures from the children's show of the same name.  As we started to see our little sugar glider's personality begin to emerge, we were amazed by how much he resembled Leo.  Therefore it was only appropriate to name our new baby boy after our first baby boy.  Despite the uncertainty of his original name, once we decided on naming our little guy Telly, the name just fit and we knew it was the one.

My sister holding Telly.

What the #$%@ is a Sugar Glider?

      I vividly remember that warm August day, back in 2012 when I laid eyes on a sugar glider for the first time.  My sister had been wanting to go to the mall in Manchester, N.H. and since summer vacation was coming to an end, my mom relented and the three of us took off.  Going to the Manchester mall was nothing new to us and we were expecting this trip to turn out like the many others before it.

      We entered the mall and began to make our way around the interior hallways, window shopping as we went along.  Then suddenly we took a corner and a huge group of people had gathered around what looked to be a couple of tables and three men advertising something.  As we got closer to the tables it became clear that each of the men had something jumping from one of their pockets to another and from one of their hands to the other.  Whatever it was, it was small enough that we still could not make out what exactly was jumping; was it a toy, was it a "magical" contraption, or something entirely different?

      Naturally, our curiosity was piqued and we moved even closer to the three men.  Suddenly realization dawned on the three of us; those things that were jumping around on the men were living creatures.  But, not just any living creature, they were exotic sugar gliders and the men were part of a company called "Pocket Pets" that sells them.  Both my sister and I are animal lovers, so we instinctively wanted to know what exactly sugar gliders are.  I am the oldest of three siblings, and I pride myself on being mature and responsible, so as much as I wanted to learn about sugar gliders I knew that getting one was out of the question.  My sister on the other hand (the youngest of three children) begged my mom to go up to one of the men and find out more about the little creatures.  My mom agreed based on the condition that we could not and would not get one, mostly due to the fact that we already had four pets (three cats and one dog) and my dad would be mad if we came home with another one.

      We approached one of the men and he told us what sugar gliders were and some basic information about them; for instance that they are native to Australia, they are marsupials, and they are legal to own in New Hampshire.  He also gave us some specific information about their company and how to care for pet sugar gliders.  Once we were done getting the information, my mom shooed me and my sister away from the area, with the idea to get us away from the sugar gliders before we started teasing to get one.  Like I said before, I truly understood that it was not a real possibility to get a sugar glider even though I thought that they were amazing little creatures that would make fun pets.  My sister on the other hand, begged and teased my mom to get one and slowly but surely my mom was giving in to her.

      Eventually, while we were walking around talking about what we had just seen and how cool it would be to have one, we saw a lady with two young daughters who had just bought two sugar gliders.  My mom approached her and just asked her a little bit about what she knew about sugar gliders and what made her decide to buy them.  The lady said that she had seen the "Pocket Pets" once before a few years ago and her daughters were absolutely enamored by the sugar gliders that they were selling.  However, the lady chose not to buy them at that time because she, like us, knew nothing about sugar gliders.  She said that when she got home she did a lot of research and sugar gliders seem to be an all around great pet.  Unfortunately, she did not cross paths with "Pocket Pets" again until that day, several years after first seeing them.

      This story only intensified my sister's desire to get a sugar glider that day because she was nervous that we would never get another opportunity to get one.  Between the information that we got directly from "Pocket Pets" and the lady's story, my mom finally gave into my sister's pleading.  We turned right around and went straight to the set-up.

      When we told the men that we wanted to buy one of the sugar gliders, they took us around the back of their set-up and showed us two cages; one was filled with female sugar gliders and one was filled with male sugar gliders.  My sister chose to get a little boy, so the man opened up the cage full of the little boys.  When the cage door was opened, my sister, mom, and I almost died from the cuteness.  Inside the cage, about twenty little baby boy sugar gliders peeked up at us from under a cloth blanket.  Instantly, my mom locked eyes with one of the little guys and knew that he was the one for us.  

      Along with our new little baby, we also bought a cage (that came with a water bottle and food dish), the specialized pellet food, vitamins, and a cloth pouch.  As soon as our little sugar glider was ours, my sister and I could not contain our happiness.  We could not wait to get home and set up our little guy's cage.  Now the only issue was, who gets to hold our new friend first?