The Travelling Vet

19

SUGAR GLIDER

‘An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.’

Martin Buber, I And Thou.

As a veterinary surgeon there are many surgical procedures we have to perform as part of our job, ranging from removing foreign objects from over-curious dogs to repairing broken bones or removing tumours. Without question, however, the one we perform more frequently than any other, and on more species than any other, is castration.

Over the years I have had to castrate so many animals, of so many species, that it could count as my area of expertize. Hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, cats, dogs, sheep, pigs, alpacas, cows, horses and donkeys would just be scratching the surface. Although the end goal of the surgery is the same, the methodology varies depending on the specific anatomy of the species. Failure to acknowledge these differences, and the specific technique required for each, could result in a life-threatening bleed or herniation. So even in a routine surgery, if the species is unusual then its anatomical idiosyncrasies must be understood. Usually these are easy enough to find from an anatomy textbook, but occasionally a curveball comes along and if the relevant information cannot be found, then the best option is to take an overcautious approach.

Each of the pratice’s vets had at least one operating day a week, and mine was Wednesday. Scanning the schedule that morning, the procedures seemed fairly routine: two cat spays, a dog castration, a lump removal and a dental. Nothing too troubling … until, that is, my eyes fell on the last two items on the list: two sugar gliders to castrate. What was a sugar glider again? Until two days previously I hadn’t even known they existed.

My Monday evening consulting list had been steady and uneventful until my 6 p.m. appointment: a Miss Toyah, with her pet skunk Sally. Sally had evidently felt that her meal of leftover Sunday roast chicken and vegetables had not been a sufficient feast, so had opportunistically gorged on two bowls of cat’s dinner belonging to Socrates and Shakespeare. The result had been spectacularly horrific. In a catalogue of repulsions, Miss Toyah’s morning had started with an unpleasant aroma greeting her nostrils; unsure of the source, she followed the wafting odour out of her bedroom and down the stairs, whereupon she stepped in a puddle of Sally’s diarrhoea, which spurted up her ankle and squelched between her toes. Attempting not to retch at the intense stench, and to blank the reality of what she had just done, she hopped into the utility room to clean it off, only to find herself standing in a pool of liquid brown skunk ordure, which had also splattered around the bottom of most of the cupboards. The clean-up operation had taken an hour, making her late for work. Sally had been confined to a crate for the day and Miss Toyah had booked a vet appointment for her after work in the hope that a rapid corrective solution could be found.

The consultation progressed normally; Sally was fine in all regards except for her uncontrollable diarrhoea. I advised a temporary dietary adjustment and probiotics that should quickly solve her problem and assumed that concluded the consultation.

‘Jon, before I go, can I just ask you about something else?’ Miss Toyah asked as I went to get the door for her and Sally.

‘Of course.’

‘I have two male sugar gliders, they’re brothers. I’ve had them about four months and they’ve been fine together. But recently they’ve started fighting quite a lot, so I think I need to get them castrated. Do you think that would help, and is that something you’d be happy to do?’

‘If they’re young males then they’re probably just reaching sexual maturity, in which case castrating them does usually help, yes,’ I replied confidently. ‘But it’ll take several weeks before the hormone levels are reduced so it won’t be an instant cure. In terms of castrating them, I’m sure you can appreciate that we don’t see many sugar gliders, but I’ll read up on their specifics and I’m very happy to do the surgeries.’

‘Oh, that would be great. I know that self-mutilation is a big problem with them post surgery, so good pain relief and feeding them on recovery really helps … but I don’t want to tell you your job.’

‘No problem. I’ll look into all those things, and if you want them done sooner rather than later I could always do them this Wednesday?’

Miss Toyah gratefully agreed, and after showing her out I quickly googled ‘sugar glider’ on the office computer. Kind of a cross between a chinchilla and a hamster. Who knew?

I spent my Tuesday evening researching and finding out everything I could about the sugar glider and what I needed to know in order to successfully operate on these two on Wednesday. Self-traumatization was indeed a big issue, as Miss Toyah had said; Buprenorphine was the recommended painkiller of choice; oh, and the male sugar glider had a bifurcated penis. Not that this would have much bearing on my surgery, but it’s always good to learn an interesting fact! Armed with all this newly acquired, if moderate, level of knowledge of Petaurus breviceps, I felt prepared enough for the procedures that lay ahead.

‘Oh my goodness you have got to take a look at the two sugar gilders,’ said Julie as she came into the prep room that morning. ‘They are so unbelievably cute, with their big eyes and little noses.’

‘You’ve admitted them, then?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, they were the first on the list to arrive. The owner’s brought some food for them, and says we have to feed them as soon as they wake up,’ she added, and then, with a slightly puzzled air, ‘And she’s also brought some pouches to put them in afterwards.’

‘Yeah, they’re prone to self-traumatizing on recovery so you have to feed them as soon as they wake up to distract them. Being marsupials, the pouches will probably make them feel secure and less interested in their wound.’

‘Huh. You seem to know a lot about them, Jon. I can see someone’s been doing their homework. I’d never heard of a sugar glider before yesterday.’

‘I might have had a bit of a read last night,’ I admitted. ‘They’re actually really interesting. Sugar gliders are nocturnal, which is why they have such large eyes. They literally glide through the air, travelling from branch to branch in search of sugary nectarous food. Hence the name.’

‘Huh, cool. So where do they come from, and do many people have them as pets?’

‘They originate from Australasia, and they’ve got quite a fan base in the States as a pet, apparently, but are only just starting to gain some popularity over here, which makes them pretty sought after and quite expensive.’

‘Listen to you! You have been doing your homework! So what’s the plan with the anaesthetic?’

‘There are a couple of different protocols that I’ve found, but given their small size I think it’ll be best to just gas them down. I don’t particularly fancy trying to give them an intramuscular injection when they’re awake, it’ll just stress them out.’

‘Sounds logical. And what about analgesia?’

‘Buprenorphine is best. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories are debatable, so we’ll steer clear of them.’

‘OK, glad you know what you’re doing. So what order do you want to do the ops in?’

‘Let’s do the cats first, then the dog, then the lump removal, then the sugar gliders and we’ll finish with the dental.’

Two hours later and I was putting the final stitch in a ten-year-old female boxer, from whom I had removed a suspicious-looking lump in her left flank, and the time had come to turn my attention to our two little Antipodean friends.

‘Do you want Sean or Shane first?’ Julie asked.

Sean and Shane the Australian sugar gliders? Of course, what else could they be called? Especially with Socrates and Shakespeare the cats and a skunk called Sally. I wondered how many other animals she had. Simon the salamander, perhaps, Seth the saluki. ‘I don’t mind. Can you tell them apart?’

‘Apparently Shane has a larger black stripe on his forehead and a more yellow tinge to his underbelly compared to Sean.’

‘Good to know. Well whichever, I honestly don’t mind.’

We carried Maisie the boxer back to her kennel where Heather would recover her, and then returned to the prep room to prepare for the first sugar glider. With everything set, Julie disappeared, returning moments later with a small bundle in her hands, which she placed in a small box on the table. A little nose poked out from a green knitted pouch, followed by two beady eyes eagerly searching for something to munch on. I had to admit he was pretty adorable. The box Julie had placed him in was specially designed to anaesthetize any such small animal. Closing the lid on it, I connected up the anaesthetic machine and turned it on, thus delivering a mixture of oxygen and vaporized Isoflurane into the box. After a few minutes the sugar glider was sound asleep. I flushed the box with air before opening it and removed the little fella.

‘So this is probably Shane then?’ I said, seeing the large black stripe on his forehead.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ Julie agreed as she connected a small anaesthetic mask to the machine, which we then put over Shane’s mouth and nose to maintain anaesthesia throughout the procedure.

Turning Shane over, I got quite the anatomical shock. None of my extensive reading up on sugar gliders had prepared me for quite how large and pendulous their testicles were.

‘That’s quite the landing gear for these little fliers,’ Julie commented.

‘Indeed. I understand now why they refer to them as the “pom-pom”!’

‘The what?’

‘Apparently a sugar glider’s testicle sac is referred to as the pom-pom.’

‘You serious? I love it. Well, do you remove the pom-pom at the same time as the testicles?

‘I’ve read about both the normal technique and the scrotal ablation, or de-pom-pomming, but I haven’t really decided which I was going to do. I was going to see when I did the surgery.’

‘De-pom-pomming? Amazing! Is that the technical term? So, do you want me to clip up the pom-poms and prep him?’

‘Let’s get him settled in theatre on a heat pad and make sure he’s stable. I’ll draw up some Buprenorphine and scrub up while you prep him.’

‘Sure.’

I calculated the dose – barely a needle full – drew it up and gave it under the skin. Shane didn’t flinch.

‘He seems nicely asleep,’ I said to Julie as she busied herself setting him up on a pile of towels over a heat mat and cocooned in a space blanket.

‘That should keep him cosy and warm.’

I started washing my hands as Julie clipped away at the surgical site. It was a delicate procedure which she took great time and care over. So much so, that I’d finished scrubbing up before she had finished, so she briefly broke away to open my sterile kits, which contained hand towels, drapes and surgical instruments. With my sterile gloves on, I started laying out the instruments and sorting through the equipment, and Julie turned her attention back to clipping.

‘Oops!’ She suddenly exclaimed. ‘I don’t think I meant to do that. I think I’ve just de-pom-pommed him!’

It was true. Despite her best attempts at trimming the surgical site, the clippers had caught and in one movement my surgical skills were no longer required.

‘Well, I guess that decides what technique I’m going to use!’ I studied the wound where moments before the testicles had been. Remarkably, there was virtually no blood. It had been a clean cut.

‘I’m sorry, Jon, I feel terrible. Poor little fella,’ she added apologetically.

‘It appears we have discovered a very efficient way of neutering sugar gliders! If I put one stitch around the vessels, we can glue the skin together and that’s the job done.’ I placed a clamp on the exposed vessels. ‘Can you pass me some 4-0 Vicryl suture.’ Moments later the procedure was complete.

‘There we go, the most efficient castration in history!’

‘I can’t believe I did that,’ she said, looking at the pendulous anatomy now dangling from the clipper blades. ‘Do you think Miss Toyah will want to keep the pom-poms?’

‘I can imagine a fashion world that would go crazy for pom-pom earrings, but I don’t think the time is quite yet.’

Turning off the anaesthetic vaporizer, we watched and waited for Shane to come round. Happy that the wound all looked fine we popped him in his knitted pouch and armed ourselves with the dried cranberry and apple pieces ready to distract him on his recovery. Minutes later he started stirring. Seemingly no worse off for his ordeal, he immediately picked up the scent of the food. Julie offered him a cranberry, which he grabbed with both front paws and started tucking into ravenously, then turning with equal enthusiasm to my offering.

‘Isn’t he so cute the way he holds his food, bringing it up to his mouth to devour it?’

It was indeed a very adorable sight.

‘So what now?’

‘If Heather has finished recovering Maisie, she can continue feeding this little fella and we can move on to Sean.’

Adjusting the technique slightly second time around, Sean was successfully and more conventionally castrated using a scalpel blade rather than clippers. He recovered equally well so I was able to discharge Shane and Sean to a delighted Miss Toyah, who also informed us that her week was picking up: Sally was no longer redecorating the downstairs of her house.

‘Miss Toyah was very grateful for our efforts,’ I reported to Julie as she was packing up the surgical kits we had used that day.

‘Oh, I am glad. And how’s Sally the skunk?’

‘Much better.’

‘Sugar gliders and skunks in one week. It doesn’t get much weirder than that, Jon.’

‘I know, not really what you imagine in a rural veterinary practice. Do you think our de-pom-pomming technique will ever make it into the textbooks?’

Sugar gliders: fast facts

Petaurus breviceps: The sugar glider

Distribution: Found throughout the northern and eastern parts of mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and some Indonesian islands.

Names: A male is called a ‘sugar bear’, a female a ‘honey glider’, and the young a ‘joey’. A group of sugar gliders is called a ‘colony’.

Life span: 9–12 years.

Habitat: Rainforest, or dry forests of eucalyptus or acacia trees. They require a dense mid- and upper-canopy cover to enable them to travel through it. Being nocturnal, they are active and feed at night, sheltering in tree hollows during the day.

Diet: Sugar gliders are seasonally adapted omnivores, being insectivorous in the summer and in winter feeding on the sugar gum, sap or nectar that exudes from plants. They are also opportunistic feeders, and will eat small lizards, bird eggs, fungi or native fruits if available.

Gestation: 15–17 days, usually giving birth to 2 joeys.

Weight: 0.2 grams at birth, reaching an adult weight of about 120 grams.

Growth: The joey will migrate to the pouch and latch on to a nipple, where it stays for 60 days. Males can reach sexual maturity as early as 4 months, but females are not sexually mature until about 8 months, neither being fully grown until 2 years.

Body temperature: 35.8–36.9 °C.

Interesting facts: During cold weather, and when food is scarce, sugar gliders are able to enter a state of torpor as an energy-conserving mechanism, allowing their body temperature to drop as low as 10.4 °C without causing any damage. Torpor is different from hibernation in being a short-term daily cycle lasting anything from 2 to 23 hours. They also possess a membrane between their fore and hind limbs, which allows them to launch themselves from a tree and glide for as far as 50 metres. It has been calculated that for every 1.82 metres they travel horizontally, they drop 1 metre.

Conservation: Despite the loss of a lot of their natural habitat in Australia over the last 200 years, sugar gliders have adapted to live in small patches of remnant bush and their numbers have thrived and so they are not considered at risk. The IUCN classes them as being of least concern. However, several of their close relatives such as the Leadbeater’s possum and the mahogany glider are endangered due to deforestation. Since 1990 the world has lost over 129 million hectares of forest – an area the size of South Africa. The World Wildlife Fund is working to lobby governments to improve smarter land use to prevent further deforestation between now and 2030. See: www.wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/deforestation.