Monday, March 10, 2014

Still Trying

We still have three cages of gliders at the time. CB and Sprite, Rossby and Foehn, and Flurry.  Flurry will be on his own for another month or two yet.  He is scheduled to be be neutered on April 1, and once he has recovered from the surgery we'll see about getting him together with one of the pairs, unless they are all together by then.

We have been trying different tactics to get Foehn and Sprite together for the last couple of months. The first thing we tried was taking the two of them into the bathroom to let them interact with each other. For brief moments things would seem OK, but then either Foehn would make a move at Sprite, or Sprite would start loudly crabbing. After that Foehn would stalk or chase Sprite, and she spent her time trying to stay as far away from Foehn as possible. Her first route of escape was to climb up the shpwer curtain and sit on the shower rod, watching Foehn from high ground.

Sprite sitting on the shower curtain rod in the bathroom.

Her other spot was on my shoulder, and if she was on the floor that was her first "go to" spot.

Sprite keeping an eye out for Foehn from her perch on my shoulder.


Eventually Foehn got brave and started climbing the shower curtain as well, so Sprite stayed on the move. When she wasn't chasing Sprite, Foehn was marking and chewing on things, and can't seem to just chill out.

The bathroom turned out to be just too big as they could easily avoid each other. So, the next step was to try the two of them in the tent. That ended up with Foehn chasing Sprite most of the time. They did ball up once in a while, but Sprite seems to be faster and more agile than Foehn and manages to stay ahead of her.

The latest variation, which we just started a few days ago, is to bring the boys (CB and Rossby) in the tent as well. Foehn is somewhat more distracted with them present, but still takes every opportunity to chase down Sprite. At this point we're not sure what it's going to take to break this stalemate,