Sugar gliders 'abandoned' at the Edmonton airport will be returned to owner
To say it's been a full house at Ciera Kozak's place this week would be an understatement.
On Wednesday, she took possession of eleven sugar gliders she says were abandoned by their owner at Edmonton International Airport, because they didn't have the proper paperwork to be put on a flight.
Since then, the owner has contacted the airline, Kozak and Alberta SPCA, saying he wants the animals back.
Though she's hesitant to do so, Kozak said she will comply.
President of the Sugar Gliders Society of Canada, Kozak said she heard about the animals through a friend and phoned the airline. A decision was made to let her take the animals and look after them.
When she got to the airport to pick them up, she found the animals in two small plastic containers, with eight of them in one container.
"They were really scared and they all just started jumping out immediately," she said.
She took the animals to her home in Sherwood Park, where she put them in larger cages and gave them food and clean water.
"They're a boreal animal," she said. "They live in trees and jump from tree to tree, so they need a lot of room. So them being in those tiny little boxes, they were probably stressed, they probably fought and it wasn't healthy for them."
Sugar gliders are nocturnal, gliding possums native to Australia. They are named for their appetite for fruit and their ability to glide from tree to tree.
Cute critters often bought on impulse
The small animals are cute and people often buy them on impulse. Kozak said the animals have been sold at various events this summer, including briefly at Klondike Days and at the Big Valley Jamboree.
The Alberta SPCA didn't get involved in confiscating the animals initially because they weren't contacted, said spokesperson Roland Lines. But the SPCA did contact Kozak on Friday to inform her the animals need to be returned to their rightful owner.
"It's our understanding that the owner thought he had all the required paperwork and left them after he thought they'd been processed and would be taken," Lines said.
"Now that the owner has been contacted and he has requested them back, to our knowledge there is no legal reason that he can't reclaim them. They are his legal property. They were not seized as animals in distress by any official agency, and so at this point the owner does have legal claim to the animals."
