Because flying squirrels are nocturnal, Sabrina and Scooter's day starts with going to bed! When we have a presentation to give, they'll get woken up by their owner and it's off in the car. After a presentation at an elementary school, Sabrina and Scooter come back home with her owner and are put back to bed.

Sabrina and Scooter have their very own "cage-rooms", basically walk-in cages (we would never keep Sabrina or Scooter in a typical cage, unless we are travelling) and these "cagerooms" contain a selection of nesting boxes. Because flying squirrels, by instinct, prefer to move nesting locations fairly often, we like to have a good number of them available for them. By the time dawn rolls around, each has picked which nest they will spend the daytime in. They will "squirrel nap" the day away, interspersed with fits of intense grooming. Once in a while they will stretch out their forelimbs and yawn. Their  nesting material is organic raw cotton. They do not poop or pee in their nests. In fact, both Sabrina and Scooter are "potty trained", in that they urinate only in one spot (on a plastic tray) and defecate, for hte most part, on the same plastic tray. They do not normally take food into their sleeping nests either. Some nests are for sleeping, resting and grooming, others are for food caching.

When the sun goes down, Sabrina and Scooter become restless - their "day" is just now beginning! Because, like all animals, a flying squirrel's internal clock is driven by circadian rhythms, they come out of their daytime refuge at different times, depending upon the time of year. In December, when the days are short and the nights are long, Sabrina and Scooter will come out around 6  p.m. or so. In July, when the sun doesn't set until after 9 p.m., they won't even poke their heads out until 10 p.m. or so!

Once they are out of their nests, however, they are full of beans! To help run some of that pent-up energy off, we have designed a "romper room" for each of them. These rooms have 1" diameter woven rope strung about the ceiling area, eastern white cedar poles running across the room and up walls, rattan blinds to run around  on,  multi-chambered hanging mesh hampers to bounce around in, and single-chambered hanging mesh hampers that we put twigs with winter pre-buds or spring buds, as they really enjoy eating these buds and eating the cambium layer under the bark of the twigs. They each have two, 8-foot-long cedar branches in their "cage rooms" to run around on or just hang out on.

Sabrina and Scooter also have five running wheels. Four are Wodent Wheels^®, the only running wheel endorsed by the American Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals (ASPCA). The one on the left is the Senior model (she has two of these); the middle one is for hedgehogs, called a Wobust Wheel. The other wheel, shown on the right, is called a Stealth Wheel^®. They prefer the Wodent Wheels, and some days the Wobust model is Sabrina's  favourite, some days the Senior model is her favourite. We build custom bases for the wheels, finished with four coats of water-based urethane (for washability) and fitted with four soft rubber feet. Scooter has a Jr. Wodent Wheel, but that is much too childish for him to use now - he prefers the Sr. model for his "loop-da-loop" shenanigans (he loves to get up to speed and then hang on while the wheel spins on and on - a centrifuge of sorts!


Sabrina runs for a while, then pees in her peeing spot. Once that  is done, she is feeling a little hungry, so she heads to the dining area! Here she will find a varying assortment of fresh goodies. We buy organic where possible. Her favourite fruit? Cherries! Her favourite nut? Shagbark hickory. Below is a sample winter (out of season) "breakfast" for Sabrina. Variety is the spice of life, and we try to keep things as interesting as possible for Sabrina. We pick and gather native-to-our-area foods at the proper times and freeze them where possible. For example, we gathered 30 kilos of white, red and mossycup oak acorns this fall (we also feed wild flyers at feeding stations in Ontario, Canada). We gather bitternut hickory nuts and horsechestnuts. We have shagbark hickory nuts shipped to us from a supplier in Minnesota, USA. We gather and freeze tree buds in the spring. In season, we gather various mushrooms, both above-ground fruiting and below-ground fruiting varieties. We'll also offer her moths, june bugs, various caterpillars and pupae to chow down on. We get shelled raw walnuts, pecans, pine nuts and almonds from Costco. Her raw cashews, filberts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds come from Whole Foods. Fresh fruit such as apple, plum, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, watermelon, etc. comes from Whole Foods, as do vegetables such as squash, broccoli, sweet potato. She'll also partake in some brands of yogurt and ice cream. She really likes avocado pits too, and she looks funny holding on to a nutmeat that is almost as big as she is!

After having her fill for the moment, it's back to the wheels for a while, followed by a short snooze in a nesting box. Then later in the early morning, she's out and about making all sorts of trouble!

We gather buds in early spring, like these from American beech, one of Sabrina's favourites!	We then bag and freeze them for use during the summer, fall and winter months.
These black walnuts are soaking, ready to be peeled. Black walnut contains tannins that will turn your skin brown in no time flat, and take weeks to disappear. We wear latex gloves while working with them in this state.	Black walnuts peeled and dried. They are best left in a dark, cool room for a few weeks prior to freezing or feeding to the squirrels.
These beech nuts are ready to be bagged and flash-frozen. Mast crop production varies from year to year and species to species. Get them when the gettin' is good!	We cut, wash and freeze pine buds in early spring for treats during the year.

Shagbark hickory nut, mossycup oak acorn, bitternut hickory nut, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, cashew, almond.

Sweet potato, blueberries, cherries, green grapes, apple bits and button mushrooms.

Flyers are well-known for their sweet tooth, (they often were found drowned in maple syrup buckets, until producers began placing lids on the buckets!), so we spoil Sabrina and Scooter every so often with treats like a bit of chocolate (flyers have no problem with small amounts of chocolate), half a miniature marshmallow, a few drops of maple syrup, or a bit of a ginger snap or digestive cookie.

Captive flyers, if fed a severely restricted diet, are prone to developing metabolic bone disease, or MBD, which is a very painful affliction that results in a wasting of bone matter, causing an animal to be unable to locomote or in latter stages, sit upright, even eat...and usually results in the death of the animal - even if the condition is caught at initial onset of observable symptoms. Their drinking water is (weakly) fortified with a powdered, rodent-centric multivitamin. Although we endeavour to maintain a diet as natural as possible, we are very cognizant of Sabrina and Scooter's calcium needs. We used to provide a smattering of fruit jam mixed with limestone flour as a "side dish" every week, but we have since found a much better solution. We now use a powdered calcium/D3 supplement that dissolves in water called Calciboost Powder. The squirrels do not get this supplement 24/7, however. We do not want to provide TOO much calcium, and for that matter, TOO many vitamins. So, we alternate - one week of calcium/D3 supplement, followed by one week of multivitamins, and so on.

In season, we provide a big tray filled with forest floor soil and leaves - they like to play in the dirt sometimes (don't we all)!

Sabrina and Scooter's "cage-rooms" are cleaned daily - flyers can be messy with their food - most of the mess is created when devouring buds of tree branchlets and the husking of hard shell nuts.

We interact with Sabrina and Scooter each and every day/night, no matter what. Sometimes they'll sleep in their owner's shirt all day long! But every night, no matter what, we spend lots of time playing "chase the fingers" or "find the treat in the shirt pocket". Sabrina and Scooter love their nightly massages and chin scratches. We also use a small rodent brush and Sabrina will stay absolutely still while we brush her soft coat (Scooter is too young to "stay still" for very long!). Sabrina loves to groom her owner too! She'll lick her owner's fingers and hands, heck, she'll even groom her owner's hangnails. Now that's devotion!