Velociworld

The Sugar Glider

I was perusing the Athens, Georgia Craigslist, looking for things I want but do not really need. Farm & Garden strictly. I am afeared of perusal for amusement purposes only of the Personals. I assume every ad is actually a GBI agent, and clicking on an innocuous advert like Wholesome Threesome! will bring up pictures of children in bondage in a chicken house in Commerce, and bludgeoning by outraged instruments of The State. So I stick to Farm & Garden.

Look what I found:

A Horse Davis Boot!

Never heard of it, even under its likely proper name of a Davis horse boot, but apparently you put your horse's hoof in there if it's suffering from abscesses or the thrush, like Illya Kuryakin. 10 bucks! I don't own a horse, but I might could use that for a paperweight on my desk, or devise a drinking game using it.

I also found bunnies:

Also 10 dollars, and ready to fatten up for that Christmas hasenpfeffer.

A 1959 John Deere tractor for $4,950:

Probably $500 new. It'd look better if it was in the front yard, and I scraped most of that paint off for the rusty "distressed" look that's so popular.

Lookee here:

Only $750 for a used Big Green Egg. That's right. $750. For a Fucking. Used. Charcoal. Grill.

Them $10 rabbits are looking better about now, aren't they?

Here was the prize, the ad that grabbed me:

Well, all the ad said was SUGAR GLIDER. No pix, nothing else in the header. Now, I am recently arrived from the rear de-escalating end of a rather impersonal turnip truck, so I don't know what a sugar glider is. If it's a device for stripping or processing sugar cane, well, fuck me, I don't need it, but that doesn't mean I won't buy it! Especially if it is at the rather common Craigslist going rate of ten dollars.

It could also be one of those contraptions you put on the front porch. Half swing, half couch. A glider. For getting sugar from your baby. Key has a wrought iron glider on the back deck, but it ain't no sugar glider, I'll bet, as it seems too uncomfortable for us to sit on together.

So I clicked on the ad. It said:

I found a sugar glider, it is really shy, but doesnt bite. I do not have a cage or any supllies so buyer will need these items. I am asking 100 dollars. It would make a great christmas gift!

Now, I'm assuming found means stold, but that's just the loosey-goosey nature of the internets, isn't it? It's one big fencing operation, as far as I can tell. But the mention of a cage, and supllies [sic] had me a little worried. What the fuck do you need to cage it for? Is it like a Tasmanian Devil? Never had to cage a porch swing before.

So I Googlied it, of course, and found out it does indeed live in Tasmania:

Oh, ho: it's like one of those filthy flying squirrels, only cuter. Now you sordid people may know what a sugar glider is, but I don't truck with vermin like that, so it was a revelation. $100 doesn't seem that much, though, considering the trouble this seller has had to go to, pawning his hot cargo. On the other hand, that's 10 coneys in the pot.

I'm torn. Perhaps I could get the sugar glider, keep it in the horse boot, feed it bits of alfalfa freshly mown with the John Deere, let it play with the bunnies, and then cook them all together on the Big Green Egg. That would cover the justifications to buy all that stuff, while assuaging my sense of cosmic OCD. And simultaneously bringing some truly stinky karma down on my head, I'll wager.