Bear is one of our rescued gliders. He is a bit more wild than
our
hand-tamed babies, and he is missing a good part of his tail, due to
stress from his previous home. His and his mate's cage was kind
of
close to an Oriental Ficus, which is dangerous to gliders, but we
thought that the leaves couldn't reach the cages, and figured that
they
wouldn't reach out for them.
Apparently, one of us or our daughter had bumped the plant enough so
the
leaves were almost in the cage of Ruth and Bear. Since they are
curious
animals as we all know, Bear decided to take a nibble, and we didn't
find out until later that night when we fed them. We were really
scared, but didn't know how to get it out of his system, so we just
watched him closely for the next few days to see if anything
happened.
Four days later, I came home from work at 11:30pm and fed the gliders,
and I noticed that Bear's face was swollen. It had just kind
of popped
up all of a sudden, and I wasn't sure what to think, so we kept an
eye
on it for another couple of days. It got bad enough that Bear
got
dehydrated, couldn't stick his tongue out of his mouth to eat or drink,
and he had diarrhea. We took him to the emergency vet the next
day.
The vet found an abcess in his cheek/jaw area, not from a tooth or a
wound. We are convinced that it was the result of his little
snack on
the Ficus. The vet drained it and gave him an antibiotic and
one for us
to administer at home. We took him home and gave him a grape.
He
attacked it like he hadn't eaten in days, which he probably hadn't.
He's doing much better now, the antibiotic seems to have really helped.
We moved the plant away from the cages so this won't happen again.
Just
goes to show that gliders are a lot like babies: if they really
want
it, they'll find a way to get it.