It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

Occasional flashes of lightning and muffled rumbles of thunder filled the room as I brought all four gliders into the tent for their first "tent time" together.  I was a little apprehensive about how this would work out. I would have to keep track of four gliders climbing the walls of the tent, the artificial tree, and me to make sure there were no nasty encounters. Although they were all in the pouch together, they were sleeping,  and I wasn't sure how things were going to go when they were essentially up for their "day" and active. They were already stirring before we got into the tent, and they crawled out of the pouch without too much coaxing.  So far so good. This was a new experience for them, and they spent a few minutes checking things out. However, it wasn't long before the first dust-up occurred. Virga was sniffing Foehn, Foehn took exception and I had to break them up. Someone chomped down on my finger, and it hurt! No broken skin, though. There were a few more encounters, and on observation it was mostly Foehn who was taking exception to Virga (she gets along fine with Cirrus). Virga was actually jumping to my lap and arm when these happened, obviously a little scared.  I was now a little more than concerned about how the night would go. M had made a large pouch for them during the afternoon and I had washed the big cage, moved a second wheel into it, and we had set it up with the expectation all four would be living in it. Now I wasn't so sure that this was a good idea right off the bat.  As tent time wore on things calmed down some more and we decided that we'd go ahead with the cage arrangements. We also decided that we would stay up as long as we could to watch them and make sure things were under control.

There were a few more hisses and crabs between Virga and Foehn in the cage. Virga tended to stay off by herself and avoid Foehn and the others. Cirrus and CB would occasionally come over and check her out, but they were spending a lot of time on the wheels. In fact, I think Cirrus spent the first two hours almost continuously on the wheel. We thought they would all be exhausted after the serial introductions during the morning and afternoon, but apparently not. About 2:00 a.m. we decided to grab some sleep. M had put a blanket down on the family room floor, near the cage, and we went to sleep. We were close enough to intervene if needed.

M was awakened about 3:00 a.m. when she felt something on her face. It turned out it was little pieces watermelon. One of the gliders was apparently flinging their fruit outside of the cage on to her face about three feet away. I was unscathed. At that point things were quiet and decided to head for the comfort of our bed. When we woke up this morning all four of the gliders were in the large pouch. There was some hissing and crabbing at times as one of the gliders probably put a foot in the face of another as they squirmed to get comfortable, but otherwise everyone seemed to be getting along.