Meet Pascal

Pascal enjoying a morning yogurt treat.

Here is our latest addition, Pascal. He is an intact (for the time being) male who will be 6 years old in October. It's hard to tell from the photo, be he is a little more grayer all around than our other gliders. He carries the leucistic gene (recessive). Leucistic gliders are white with black eyes. You can see in the photo he has his "bald spot", the scent gland on the top of his head. That will disappear after he is neutered.

Pascal weighs about 85 grams, smaller than any of our other male gliders. (Flurry is now tipping the scales at 115 grams).  He has been eating well for the last week to ten days. We were concerned because the first few days he hadn't been eating much at all. We started weighing his food dishes before and after he ate and began to see a steady increase in his appetite after the first few days here.

It's a little hard to describe his personality at this point. He is very wary and obviously still unsure about his situation. We have an open pouch (more like a hammock) rather than a deep sleeping pouch our other gliders use. He tends to be pouch protective in a deep pouch and it makes it difficult to approach him. Pascal does bury himself beneath the fleece blankets but we are usually able to still see him and he can see us. He has two "pouch buddies" he sleeps with to keep him company. They are no substitute for a warm-blooded buddy, but they do provide him some security. Even though he is still unsure and uncertain and crabs to let you know, he seems to be a gentle glider. He will carefully take a mealworm from us, and will slowly approach M's yogurt covered finger for his licks. We think that once he trusts us he will be a very friendly glider.

His first appointment with the vet is on Friday for a baseline wellness check, and we will schedule his neuter to hopefully follow soon after.  It looks likes its going to take some time for him to get over his wariness and trust us, but we are working on it every day. Once he is more comfortable with us we can start thinking about a strategy to introduce him to Foehn and Rossby.

Oh, and by the way, "Pascal" is a weather-related name, which is why we chose to keep it. A pascal is a unit of pressure in the International System of Units.  Probably more than you wanted to know.