Urge Retailers to End Sale of Sugar Gliders, Part 2
BACKGROUND
Complaints continue to pour in from customers of malls across the U.S. regarding Pocket Pets, a traveling kiosk that sells tiny, exotic marsupials called “sugar gliders.” PETA has reached out to executives at Chicago’s Urban Retail Properties as well as to management at Eastwood Mall in Ohio, but our pleas appear to have fallen on deaf ears. We need your help today!
Sugar gliders are tiny nocturnal marsupials who, in nature, live in groups of 30. They spend their time in trees searching for insects and sap and frolicking with family. Kiosks and pet shops are now acquiring them from hellish breeding facilities similar to puppy mills. They are then peddled as cheap trinkets to customers who buy them on a whim. Confined to small cages, roughly handled, fed improper diets, and forgotten when the novelty wears off, sugar gliders are doomed from the moment they’re born.
Please implore Urban Retail Properties and Eastwood Mall to do the right thing and adopt a policy that prohibits the Pocket Pets kiosks from selling sugar gliders at their malls. And please forward this alert widely!
WHOM TO CONTACT
Email block
glickmanr@urbanretail.com , marketing@eastwoodmall.com , operationsmanager@eastwoodmall.com
Individual
Ross Glickman
President and CEO
Urban Retail Properties
111 East Wacker Dr., Ste. 2400
Chicago, IL 60601
312-915-2000
glickmanr@urbanretail.com
Kenneth Kollar
General Manager
Eastwood Mall
5555 Youngstown-Warren Rd.
Niles, OH 44446
330-652-6980 ext. 14
marketing@eastwoodmall.com
Patty Wiltrout
Operations Manager
Eastwood Mall
5555 Youngstown-Warren Rd.
Niles, OH 44446
operationsmanager@eastwoodmall.com
SAMPLE LETTER
Dear President Glickman, Manager Kollar, and Manager Wiltrout:
It has come to my attention that you are selling sugar gliders as toy trinkets called Pocket Pets, and I am respectfully requesting you discontinue with this idea for now and future commerce.
Please allow me to elaborate. These sugar gliders are bred in wretched conditions with high death rates, captive by breeders whose only concern is profit, making ideal food and veterinary care cost-prohibitive. Sugar gliders are naturally nocturnal, live in groups of 30, and spend their time searching for insects and frolicking with family members. Furthermore, sugar gliders indeed experience pain and react negatively towards stressful situations including loud noises, light, enclosures, and disturbed environments, the factors of both breeding and selling capacities.
As such, as long as Urban Retail Properties continues to unnecessarily and selfishly capitalize on the cruelty and death of animals, I will not financially support you; furthermore, I will promote a boycott by informing family, friends, and members of online communities.
Please make both the ethical and financially-responsible decision to discontinue animal cruelty immediately: join an increasing body of corporations who are listening to a concerned and attentive consumer population who refuse to be complicit in the inherently malicious industries of animal breeding and selling.
Thank you for taking the time to read this important message.
NAME
SEE MORE:
what is a pocket pet
something that belongs
in the wild
and dies at the vet:(
Karen Lyons Kalmenson
Our Compass 
what is a pocket pet
something that belongs
in the wild
and dies at the vet:(
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YET AGAIN ANOTHER CRUEL INSANE IDEA WHERE POOR ANIMALS ARE USED AND ABUSED ! E MAILS SENT !
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Reblogged this on delia1979.
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Please this is horrible! You have no rights to make $$$!They should be in the wild only!Not abused!
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Sent… jerks.
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Your entire post is not completely true…
as you say…
“They are then peddled as cheap trinkets to customers who buy them on a whim. Confined to small cages, roughly handled, fed improper diets, and forgotten when the novelty wears off, sugar gliders are doomed from the moment they’re born.”
That depends on the owner. One of ours came from Pocket Pets… (Which I agree do not do things right) The next 2 were purchased from a breeder. Ours our treated like kids. They live in a 6ft wide, 5ft tall cage with a LOT of toys to keep them busy. They also come out at night and are allowed to jump between us and do whatever they like in the house under supervision.
They are fed a special diet that we make from scratch given to us from our breeder. The males are neutered.
Your article comes off as stereotypical as far as prospective owners go.
I agree that many people DO NOT know what they are getting into with Gliders. But if you do… they are awesome friends. I say friends because I do not consider them pets. They each have their own personality and they are great buddies!
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zerofill, you have to know that you are the exception to the rule. I’m glad, though, that they found an awesome home, and that you love and care for them like they’re supposed to be loved and cared for–but I would guess that only about 3 or less out of 10 provide the kind of home that you have.
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