The Computer Doctor and the Marsupial Smuggler

December 19, 2000

The clock is ticking, and the week is racing towards Christmas on Monday.

Last week my oldest flew in from Phoenix, dragging one homebuilt computer in tow. It sits on my desk while I work on scanning slides and trying to get it back in working order. I have a sneaking suspicion that a software install went a wee bit "off" shall we say, because I did hear from my daughter, "You know Dad, the printer port was working, kind of."

Since the boyfriend has some of the computer disks with him, the balance of the repair will wait till he gets into town the week after Christmas. All in all, eldest will be here for a month, babies and all.

Yea, I know...

Babies.

I thought one baby this year was going to be enough, but sometime this fall we got the word from Phoenix that babies were on the way.

Isn't that the way it goes? The daughter who swears that she will NEVER have any children, comes home from college with 2 and tells you that she wants 5 more.

You read it right. Five.

Children that is.

But first she has to stay out of jail. You see, my daughter has become a smuggler, colored in shades of Miami Vice. What's a father to do?

Sigh I guess, and go off to the store with supply list in hand, all for the babies.

Marsupials none the less.

You see, apartments have policies, airlines have policies, and hey, even some states have policies. Policies that say things like, if you have a dog in this complex, we will remove it within 5 hours if we find out. And those airlines, the get stupid about dogs and cats and all as well.

Turns out, if you want to take a small pet on an airplane, you have to buy them a ticket, and there are only 2 pets allowed on any one flight.

Just think, all those carryon's, especially on the holidays, and someone might want to carry on a cat or something.

Daughter said she saw a tail sticking out of the roller bag in front of her at the Delta counter. It must have been a sign, for it clinched the deal for her. She would not make any big deal about tickets for her critters, she would simply smuggle the marsupials on the big'ol jet and take her chances.

And a marsupial is?

Didn't you have the drill in biology? Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, genus and finally species, this one being Breviceps.

A marsupium is a pouch inside the belly of the mother critter. This particular species, is also Arboreal (live in trees) and is some kind of cross between a flying squirrel and a Kangaroo.

Some verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting critters turn up on Australia. So when the 4oz critters were asleep in their pouch, carried in the smallest of cages, Daughter walked calmly through the metal detectors and boarded her plane.

She said that paying 75 bucks for 8 oz of critters was excessive and decided to take the big "chance." Since they sleep during the day, she had thought of taking them in a pouch worn around her neck, but decided that if they woke and decided to leap around the airplane, a moderate amount of panic might break out, and someone might become irritated.

Awake, she carries them around the house clinging to her clothing, or hiding under it.

I give her credit, for she build the cages herself the night of her return, and we ended up getting an extra 2 weeks of daughter out of the deal. You see, she doesn't trust us with her "babies."

And that's just fine by me.

Oh yeah... they are commonly called Sugar Gliders

Bigger Critter pic1 Bigger Critter pic2 Bigger Critter pic3

And you know what else?

The pets like it warm, so the Igloo I build in the front yard has been empty every night. Maybe after Christmas. There is just so much to do.