Unlikely Companions

by Laurie Hess

  “One of your gliders recently purchased at Johnson Valley Mall is very possibly dying at my animal hospital right now,” I said, “and I cannot treat her until I know what is making her sick. So I’m here, just looking for answers and for some help. I don’t want to lose another animal, sir.”

  “I don’t either,” Simon agreed.

  “So, if you’re saying that the gliders purchased from Johnson Valley Mall came directly from your farm, can you think of anything that could be making them sick? Like, have you altered their diets? Changed cleaning supplies?” I nervously rattled off every possibility I’d thought of. “Have you introduced any new breeders to the group? Hired new staff? Any recent building construction?”

  Simon shook his head back and forth as I suggested anything and everything I could think of that might contribute to the mysterious sickness.

  “Doctor, I assure you,” he said when I was finally finished, “conditions here are clean and safe. I don’t create risk or leave anything to chance.”

  “I believe you,” I hedged, “but—”

  Again Simon followed my eyes as I looked around the grounds. Elliot tightened his scarf as a flock of crows stirred in the trees nearby. Simon broke the silence and my uncertainty about what to do next.

  “I understand,” he said, straightening up. “Seeing is believing, right? My glider barn is over there.” He pointed across the lot. “We’re gonna freeze out here, so let me show you inside. Then you can see for yourself.”

  As we walked across the parking lot, Simon wondered aloud, “Have you spoken to the gliders’ owners? These aren’t low-maintenance animals, as I’m sure you know, Doctor. They can be easily stressed. If they’re not properly nourished and hydrated, sugar gliders will become weak, fatigued, and dehydrated—just as you’ve described.”

  “I know, and that’s what I assumed at first too, but from what I can tell, the animals were receiving proper care in their new homes. Their owners were doing everything they were instructed to do,” I said.

  I can tell almost instantly when an owner isn’t following instructions for proper care. My mind flipped back to Kira, the owner of a sugar glider whom I’d treated several years ago.

  “Sammy can’t survive on just fruit,” I’d said to Kira. She was holding her emaciated glider in the palm of her hand. “Sammy needs protein—either in pellet form or by feeding him insects.”

  “Bugs are gross,” Kira sneered.

  I expected this reaction from children, but Kira was an adult—or a young adult, anyway. I took a leveling breath and smiled. “I’m not a huge fan of bugs either, but sugar gliders are omnivores—insects are a large portion of their diet in their natural habitat.”

  “I’m a vegan, though.”

  “Okay,” I said as lightly as I could. “Let’s try to compromise. You want Sammy to live a good long life, don’t you?”

  “Well, duh.” Kira shrugged.

  “Of course you do. But if you insist on Sammy being a vegan, too, he won’t survive. If you had a baby and that baby needed milk to survive—what would you do?”

  “I’m only nineteen. I’m not even thinking about having babies right now.”

  This was a relief to hear, but she was missing my point. I rephrased the question. “At some point—in the distant future—if your baby needed something, wouldn’t you give it to him?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to be a bad mother if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Exactly, you’d give him what he needs. And right now Sammy needs protein, so let’s discuss some ways you can get him what he needs without it grossing you out.”

  SIMON UNLOCKED THE double doors to a long, narrow wooden barn with a low, angled metal roof that would provide seasonal protection from harsh sun, rain, and snow and also keep out predators such as hawks, snakes, coyotes, and foxes. It was forty degrees outside, but in Simon’s glider den, the atmosphere was warm and cozy. I guessed it was upward of eighty degrees. Sugar gliders have very little fur when they’re first born, so they have a difficult time regulating their own body temperature. Climate control for newborns is essential.

  Simon tossed a look back at Elliot. “Might want to lose the scarf, buddy. It’s summertime in here.”

  The gliders were stacked in rows of individual wire cages, each with its own light source to provide warmth. There must have been three hundred cages in there. Maybe more. A few workers wearing clean brown coveralls buzzed around the barn like bees in a hive, cleaning cages and offering gliders heaping bowls of pelleted food and produce. Shallow tubs of bleach diluted in water—footbaths to limit the spread of any potential infection—sat at the entrance of the barn for anyone who entered.

  “Slip on a pair”—Simon gestured toward a heap of rubber boots—“and I’ll show you around.”

  Elliot and I pulled the oversized boots over our shoes.

  “Mamas and their babies on the right,” Simon explained. “Gliders just out of the pouch on the left.”

  Like other marsupials, such as kangaroos, wallabies, and koala bears, sugar gliders give birth to relatively undeveloped babies. The young gliders crawl out of their mother’s belly when they’re no bigger than the size of a pea and head straight for her snuggly and safe protective pouch, where they spend nearly two months nursing before they’re large enough to wean and actually be “born.”

  I bent forward and peered inside a cage. Five or six gliders were nestled together in a bed of shredded newspaper. The baby on top of the heap cracked open a curious, bright eye.

  “How old are these little ones?” I whispered, trying not to disturb them.

  “They just crawled out of Mama’s pouch maybe three days ago. We won’t sell them until they can easily eat on their own. That’ll take a month at least.”

  “Look at those little pink toes,” I said, warming to the sweet scene. “And those teeny-tiny ears. It’s amazing how small they are.”

  Simon held up a thumb and said, “And hardly this long when I send them out.”

  I pointed to another baby curled up in the corner of the cage. “Look at that one—you can just start to see a charcoal stripe growing in down his back.”

  I broke away from Simon and Elliot and walked down a row of wire cages. The floor was completely free of debris, and each cage was neat and tidy. Given the hundreds, if not thousands, of animals that Simon was housing here, the level of cleanliness was impressive. Large fans whirred near the ceiling and kept the room well ventilated. I didn’t detect even a whiff of urine or feces. There was no smell of any harsh chemicals either, remarkable considering the number of cleaning products that would be necessary to achieve this level of disinfection. Harsh chemicals or excessive ammonia buildup from urine could damage the gliders’ respiratory tracts and make them more vulnerable to infection, which I had considered as a possible source of illness. But now, as I walked up and down the meticulously kept rows of cages, I had to rule that out too.

  Simon walked up behind me. “So to answer your questions—all my glider cages are cleaned routinely, and the animals are given fresh food and water twice daily. We haven’t added any new supplements or changed their food recently. No new cleaning supplies, new hires, or construction anywhere on site either. I use the same breeding stock from year to year, and all of my breeders are checked regularly to make sure the animals are healthy. The protocol here is that any gliders exhibiting the slightest signs of sickness are removed from the group, isolated, and treated until they’re healthy enough to rejoin the others. I haven’t treated a sick glider in months, if not longer.”

  “The animals all look healthy; they don’t appear to be lacking in anything.”

  “I’d say ‘I told you so.’”

  I stopped and turned toward Simon. “I didn’t mean to offend you by suggesting otherwise,” I explained, “but I’m sure you understand why I wanted to see for myself.”

  Simon nodded.

  “With your permission, I’d like to take one of the babi
es back with me to the hospital to run some general blood tests and perform a stool examination. I promise to personally provide the animal with proper nutrition and excellent care.”

  Simon thought about it for a moment. “It’s an unusual request, but if you think it’ll help . . .”

  “I hope it will help me rule out your farm as the source of infection or point me in another direction if I pick up any abnormalities in the young glider’s test results.”

  “And assuming the tests come back clean, what do we do next?”

  “We?”

  He motioned toward the rows of cages. “Doctor, I’m just as concerned as you that any of my gliders are dying. This isn’t just a business for me. I care about these animals—they’re my babies. If something’s making them sick, I need to do something about it. And the sooner the better. My next shipment is scheduled to go out tomorrow.”

  “Where’s it going?”

  “Trucks to Long Island and Chicago are set to leave in the morning.”

  “Chicago?” I felt a prickly sense of foreboding. Hadn’t the Westchester Journal article explicitly said that Sugar Buddies sold exotic animals at malls throughout the tristate area?

  “Do you sell your gliders in other areas outside the Northeast?”

  “Well, I don’t, but Exotic Essentials does.”

  The name put me on alert. Something was starting to click into place. “And what is Exotic Essentials?”

  “They’re my chief distributor.”

  Simon must have recognized my puzzled expression. He explained, “I breed hundreds of sugar gliders at one time, and then Exotic Essentials buys them from me and distributes them to local kiosks like Sugar Buddies in malls all over the country.”

  Click.

  “Do you know which states specifically?”

  “Jeez, all over. Massachusetts, Connecticut—”

  “Tampa?” I asked, although, to my regret, I already knew the answer.

  His eyes widened. “Are gliders turning up sick in Tampa too?”

  “Gliders are turning up dead all over the country.”

  2:05 P.M., SUGAR BUDDIES’

  “CORPORATE OFFICE”

  MY MIND WAS buzzing as Elliot and I got back into the car.

  “No cell service out here,” I groaned and tapped at my phone repeatedly.

  I was in a rush to call Hannah, my colleague and former mentor from the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan who now had an exotic animal practice in Long Island similar to mine. Simon had confirmed that a shipment of nearly two dozen gliders would be arriving at the Winslow Mall tomorrow, not twenty miles from Hannah’s clinic. If any of them became sick, Hannah would likely be the first to treat them. She needed to know everything I’d recently learned about the fast-spreading sickness.

  As I turned onto the main road, my Android phone emitted a series of dings.

  “Cell service,” I cheered and quickly entered my passcode. Eight missed calls. Oh, no. I drew in a worried breath, assuming the calls had come from the hospital. Had Mathilda’s condition further declined? Had another sick glider been brought in? When I scanned the call list, I saw that none of the calls were from Marnie; rather, two were from Luke’s school, and the rest were from Peter. My professional concern shifted to maternal worry. I quickly called Peter’s cell, and Luke picked up.

  “Hi, Mom!” he chirped. “I’m using Dad’s cell phone.”

  He was okay. Or at least he sounded okay.

  “Luke, honey, are you hurt? Why did your school call me? Did something happen?”

  Believe it or not, at ten years old, Luke’s almost taller than I am, but he’ll always be my baby.

  “I’m fine. The nurse just says I have the pink eyes.”

  I exhaled and smiled at the malapropism. Pink “eyes” I could handle. “Honey, remember you’ve had this before. The two most important things—wash your hands, and don’t touch your eyes. Pink eye is highly contagious.”

  “I know,” he grumbled. “That’s what Dad said.”

  “Did Dad pick you up from school?”

  “Yeah, about fifteen minutes ago.”

  It took me a few seconds to put it all together. The school had called me, but I hadn’t been able to receive the calls at Simon’s farm. After trying me twice, they’d called Peter, and he’d come to the rescue. He must have canceled his late-afternoon conference call in the city in order to pick up Luke. I squirmed, feeling bad that I’d been out of touch. I’d missed another maternal moment, and as he so often and dependably does, Peter had shown up in my absence. I was sure he’d done it without hesitation or any resentment toward me, and still I wished that I’d been there instead.

  “Where is Dad now, and why do you have his cell phone?”

  “He’s inside the drug store getting my subscription.”

  “Prescription,” I gently corrected him.

  “You know what I mean,” he sighed. I imagined him flipping back his tangle of strawberry curls.

  “Have him call me, okay? Once Brett’s done with soccer practice, I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “Mom?” his voice sweetened. “Can I order Chinese from GrubHub?”

  “No, Luke, you don’t need food delivery. You’ve got your father to fix you a snack. I’ll be home soon, okay?”

  And with that, his adolescent tone returned. “Okayyyyy.”

  I hung up and quietly stared out at the snow-covered road ahead.

  After a few quiet moments, Elliot said, “My mom’s always been a bookkeeper. I bet your boys think you have the coolest job in the world.”

  He’d overheard enough, I guessed, to pick up on my perpetual mommy guilt.

  “Yeah,” I said, attempting to smile as I stared ahead. “I guess they think it’s pretty cool.”

  I thought back to the time I’d brought four Flemish giant rabbits and a dozen baby chicks to Luke’s class before the Easter holiday. As I spread them out on the lawn so his classmates could pet and chase them around, I overheard Luke, a first grader then, bragging to a group of his friends, “That’s my mom. She’s an animal doctor.”

  But that was just one special day many years ago. What about all of the others?

  3:30 P.M., ANIMAL HOSPITAL

  ELLIOT AND I walked through the glass double doors right behind Alan, the FedEx guy.

  “Delivery!” he chirped.

  “More bird food?” I teased.

  This was our running joke. Alan had been delivering to the hospital since nearly the day we opened, and though he was good-humored now, in the beginning “more bird food” was his constant complaint. Back then, he’d arrive with a delivery—carts piled high with hay, dollies stacked with cumbersome equipment, and heavy bags of bird food that he’d haul in haughtily on his shoulders. One afternoon he struggled through the waiting room trying to negotiate an extraordinarily large bag that was punctured and spilling pellet all over the floor.

  “Next time, I’m going to just back the truck through the front doors,” he said, cursing under his breath.

  “Hey, Alan,” Marnie said cheerfully. “How’s your day?”

  “How does it look?” Alan shot back. “It’s all over the floor. And every week the shipment gets heavier.” He stopped to wipe the sweat off his forehead.

  “I thought you might be interested in another shipment the hospital just received.”

  “What’s that?” Alan said without breaking his concentration on the floor. “Because I’m almost done here.”

  “Four rescued degus. We’re looking to find them new homes.”

  Alan stopped chasing the last of the stray pellets on the floor and squinted up at Marnie.

  With their brown fur and long tails, these small South American rodents look like oversized gerbils; though often as large as rats, they are much more cuddly and approachable. They’re playful, curious, and quick, and they love to climb and dart around.

  “Want to take a look?” Marnie smiled. Without his realizing it, Marnie had gleaned something
about Alan. She had observed that nearly every time he made a delivery, he’d stop in the lobby to peer over his glasses at our collage of animal photos. In particular, he’d pause at the image of a family of degus.

  “They’re pretty cute,” she said, coaxing him. “Especially the little brown one that squeaks. I’ve nicknamed him Alan.”

  “Huh? You’re kidding,” Alan said, embarrassed. “You didn’t name an animal after me.”

  “I did.”

  When Alan saw the four rescues, Marnie watched him transform from a hardened, overworked man into a young boy who’d probably always wanted a light and easy, sweet-natured pet of his own. And when Alan held the smallest of the litter in his burly hands, the rodent happily ran up his arm and perched atop his shoulder. That was the day that Alan the delivery guy took home Alan the degu.

  Today Alan was whistling as he unloaded the last box from his cart when Marnie entered the waiting room.

  “Finally,” she said, struggling to pull her scrub top over her head.

  “Who—me?” Alan asked.

  “No—them.” Marnie pointed at Elliot and me.

  “What happened to you?” I looked her up and down. “Is that vomit?”

  “Things got a little ugly around here,” she said, “but the ferret in exam room three no longer has a Barbie doll head stuck in his throat.”

  I suppressed a smile. “And what about our patient in ICU?” My heart sank again when I thought about Mathilda.

  Marnie shook her head. “Motionless. Still not eating. Won’t even take food from the syringe when I try to feed her.”

  I held up the small cage. Simon had carefully removed a baby glider from a new litter and packed him up for transport to the hospital. “I brought this one back from the farm. Elliot’s calling him Baby G.” The tiny baby glider was curled up in my purple chenille scarf in one corner of the cage. Simon hadn’t had more than shredded newspaper to keep the baby insulated once we left the warmth of the glider barn, so I’d wrapped him in my scarf to nest in.