Exotic animals make for unusual pets

For some Truman students, having a dog or a cat is too traditional. These students prefer the more exotic version of "man's best friend."

Sophomore Kyle Talbot bought two sugar gliders over Winter Break. Sugar gliders are the marsupial version of flying squirrels, and originate in Indonesia and Australia.

"I've got a good friend back home that has one, and I always liked hanging out with her, and I always had fun," Talbot said. "So it was kind of an impulse thing, but it was also planned out."

He said he traveled to Minnesota to buy the sugar gliders because it is hard to find breeders.

"They don't usually sell them to people unless they have experience, so I had to find someone that would be willing to sell them to someone that was new and also someone that's kind of young," he said.

He said sugar gliders are hard to take care of - they are nocturnal and require a special diet that he orders online - but the experience has been worth it.

"You can feed them different things but [the diet I order is] a big conglomeration of random things, like in this one it's scrambled eggs, honey, water, bee pollen and HPW powder, which is like a wombat powder, and then you mix it all up and freeze it, and it comes out like ice cream," Talbot said. "I also feed them fruits and vegetables at night."

Talbot said when he has friends over, the gliders crawl all over them because they are bonding animals, but they usually spend more time with Talbot than anyone else.

"I would recommend [sugar gliders to] someone [who] would take the time - you just have to like animals well enough, and you have to be willing to go through the good as well as the bad," Talbot said.

Senior Richard Lloyd is the proud owner of a six foot red-tailed Columbian boa constrictor named Lucy. He said he got her three and a half years ago when he was a freshman.

Lloyd said his first exotic pet was a scorpion. When he went to college he had to leave it at home because it wasn't allowed in the residence halls. The scorpion died because his brother mistakenly thought it was dead when it was shedding its skin and buried it, he said. Lloyd then invested in another exotic pet after his scorpion died.

"I couldn't decide between a tarantula or a snake, and the tarantula would have been a lot like the scorpion in the fact that I would have been terrified to play with it," Lloyd said.

He said he is less afraid of his snake, but she did bite him once.

"The time she bit me, she realized I wasn't food right away, and the only reason she bit me was because I smelled like mice," Lloyd said. "It's very important to be very clean with them."

Junior Tony Wilmes takes care of five turtles and two tortoises.

"I want to be a herpetologist someday, so I want to study them," Wilmes said. "Actually, I want to be a zookeeper, so I figure I might as well practice with my own first."

He said he caught some of his aquatic turtles himself, and he recently bought a baby Burmese mountain tortoise at a reptile show.

"It's the fourth largest species of tortoise in the world, so it's supposed to get up to 40 pounds," Wilmes said. "So I'm pretty excited."

Wilmes said turtles and tortoises are really easy to take care of, and he recommends them as pets to anyone.

"They're awesome pets - everyone loves turtles," he said.