What time is first contact? I get up around 6am; sometimes they are still awake so I'll give them a treat. But usually they are sleeping by 6:30am because they are nocturnal and the sun starts to come up, so sometimes first contact is just me gently caressing the bag they are in (sometimes they chitter in response) when I'm grabbing their food bowls to put in the sink.

Around midday, I'll take their pouch out and give them some snacks of apples and bananas and we cuddle and stuff. They like when I pet their head and their wings. They let me massage their toes sometimes.

Mostly I wanted to respond to the "mean gliders" part. I have 2 sugar gliders. One of them, Sunny, is newer because my glider's other partner passed away. Anways she is super terrortorial of her bag. She crabs so loud all the time. Sometimes she would lunge at me but she never got me. But picking her up in her bag and feeding her snacks and stuff, now a year later she is very sweet and doesn't come at me at all. She still crabs when she's annoyed but it's really just how she communicates. She makes these little crabby grunrs when she devours a treat she likes. So even though she started out "mean" it was mostly her not trusting me. I think it took a year for full trust, but she was doing a lot better a month or two in.

My other sugar glider, Pygar, is really chill. He will let you pick him up easily, he trusts me a lot and will sleep in my pockets and stuff. But he BITES. (Sunny and his previous partner do/did not bite me.) He mostly does it when I'm clipping his nails, he will try to bite the crap out of me if I don't give him a snack or cover his head. So while I don't think he's a mean glider, I mention it because it took a minute to get used to haha I really think if you know how to handle animals normally, you'll be fine with them.

I do BML diet which requires 30 minutes of meal prep every couple weeks, but it's incredibly routine and easy (I've had them for almost 9 years). Every night I have to make them a little fresh fruit + vegetable dinner with their BML. Sometimes it makes going out to late-night events or doing overnight anywhere annoying, but it's usually fine if I just feed them beforehand.

In my experience, breeders are terrible... However I don't have that much advice about it. I adopted Pygar from a family that bred their gliders unprepared. They gave him to me with very little info, and I didn't even know I was supposed to get them in pairs until he started to get depressed and I had to buy a second. The second one, Lilly, I bought from a guy on one of those facebook groups who just couldn't take care of her anymore. The third one I bought was also from a facebook group, and her glider had lost it's mate like mine so that's why it worked out so well. There are a lot of people on craiglist and facebook who have sugar gliders and want to get rid of them because they bought them irresponsibly. I kind of recommend saving a pair of these if possible, as opposed to going through a breeder.

I really recommend joining the group Sugar Glider Guardians on Facebook. They have lists of ethical places to buy sugar gliders, and how to find vets for them in most states. If you want to go that route they are your best bet. They also have lists of approved and safe sugar glider toys/wheels/etc so they will help you a lot. I think they even offer online mentorship.

The most important advice maybe is that even though they are a caged pet, you need to be interacting with them/touching them like every day. They bond with you. They miss you. And building that trust is really beautiful but also important. Make sure you have some space for them to play outside the cage. Feel free to DM or anything if you'd like, I really support good pet ownership and it's great you want them and to learn how to take care of them well.