Wow, I just checked my site stats today and I’m totally shocked by the number of views on Saturday, 2 July 2011. Almost 700 views in 1 day!!!!! Well, for those of you who are curious, it is because local television program, Majalah 3 did an interview on some sugar glider owners.

I watched the segment and I’m pretty angry and disappointed at how Majalah 3 did the interview. There was no information about proper sugar glider nutrition or care. It was poorly managed. I’m saying this from my point of view because I do not want people to get sucked into obtaining sugar gliders cause it is cute. Yes, the whole tv interview was basically focusing on how cute, portable and adorable the sugar glider is, never highlighting about health issues, diet issues. I think I even heard someone say keeping sugar gliders is easy. Anyway, people said that the TV station cut and minus out all the proper information. Well, TV is TV, they wanna just attract the crowd, never caring about what would happen after the program is aired.

Wanna know what happened? Sugar glider demand and sales sky rocketed. So many recently bought underaged joeys and are now crying in forums and groups about how to care for their joeys. I too was getting the effect. I got many SMS and emails about people wanting joeys from me. I can tell from their short messages that they are just getting on impulse, all thanks to Majalah 3.

It’s fine if you want to popularize the hobby, but my number one aim whenever I do interviews is to firstly make sure that people understand that keeping sugar gliders is demanding, not easy and veterinary care is hard to come by, especially for people not in KL. Share with your friends about the complications that sugar gliders can get, share with people the diet and nutrition, share about the common mistakes people do and what sickness sugar gliders get. That should be the number one aim with media interviews. I do know some are trying to get a little 15 minutes of fame to gain popularity and to boost their business.

I remembered getting interviewed by The Star newspaper, I mentioned that I’m a breeder but I do not openly sell suggies. I try to educate people, this is why I started this blog. All my experience, my learnings everything that I know about sugar gliders go into this blog. I rarely advertise my joeys for sale. You won’t see me in Mudah.my or Adpost.com or online classifieds. If you do, is mainly to have my blog address posted so more people can read and learn about keeping sugar gliders.