The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

The sugar glider is an adorable, furry animal that measures about a foot in length—roughly half body and half tail. This expensive flying marsupial comes from the Australasian rainforest, and it’s suddenly become popular here and nationwide. The animal is named for its attraction to sweet tree fruits of the rainforest canopy, and its ability to glide for short distances using the webbing between its front and hind legs—like a flying squirrel.

On first inspection, the creature cries out for easy metaphors. Is it a chipmunk with a monkey’s tail? A raccoon shrunk in the washer? A hamster with the gift of flight? But it’s the eyes that really sell it, especially to children and soft-hearted adults. They are big, limpid, and black, and surrounded by a mask of dark fur. The eyes are distinct in the animal companion pantheon. So entrancing, in fact, that it takes you a while to notice the animal’s sharp claws, which dig into your flesh as it tries desperately to escape from your hands. Ouch! Once free, the animal makes a beeline up your arm and shoulder to the top of your head, presumably in search of any fruit that might be growing up there.

According to Erin Hertel, who breeds and sells the animals, sugar gliders are high-maintenance pets. They need at least a half hour—and preferably an hour—of attention every day from their owners, in order to remain tame. Gliders who don’t bond with people early in life are harder to work with, such as the breeding male that Hertel has affectionately come to call “Evil” because of its proclivity for biting her.

To help the owner-animal bond, Hertel asks buyers to come and handle the animal each day for several weeks, once the joey has emerged from its mother’s pouch. Tammy Mason, a breeder in Mankato, strongly recommends that gliders be bought in pairs. She says they are highly social animals, and they can actually die of loneliness if the owner is away too much.

With a life expectancy of about 15 years, the glider’s need for attention can represent a substantial commitment, as can its dietary regimen—about three-quarters fruit and one-quarter protein. Then there’s the fact that gliders cannot be house-trained, a character flaw which they remind owners of frequently and without prejudice. Hertel says there are tricks to induce elimination before they are handled, but the less said about that the better.

Gliders are popular among college students, whose nocturnal habits mirror their own, and apartment dwellers who can’t have a dog or a cat. Sugar gliders will sleep in their owner’s shirt pocket while they watch TV or work on the computer. Some even like to carry the animals in a pocket or a specially-made zippered pouch when they’re out of the house. But hazards for the sugar glider abound in the human setting. A chance flight through an open toilet seat—a strange propensity indeed, for the incontinent little guy—can mean a sad and ignoble end to the $200 pet.