I have had a female suggie since Sept 24th. They said she was 10oop. She constantly crabs at me. She rarely lets me hold her and when I put her in her bonding pouch, she crabs there too. She's eating, but not much. 2 weeks ago I got a male suggie. He's much bigger than she is. When I was talking to the previous owner, he was climbing all over her. When I try to hold him, he runs away. :(. So now I'm really paranoid to take them out and try to see if they'll stay with me. It only took them about 2 hours before they were best friends. He's coming around more and more each day, but I feel like I'm not making any progress with her. My question is, will she ever be comfortable enough to "play" with me? Is it normal for them to crab so much? TIA

YES crab, yes crab long time.
yes crab more, yes more crab.

you are a predator, you want to EAT them, it will take time for some gliders to believe you are NOT going to eat them. keep up the bonding pouch, keep up bathroom time in a GLIDER SAFE ROOM.

DO NOT LET THEM LOOSE, unless you are good at catching them, they are fast
and sometime slippery and sometimes bity.

Once you can handle them in your glider safe room, once they will come to you for a treat or just come to you in glider safe room, then move to another room if you wish, but finding a lost glider can be very hard specially if they are still crabbing and scared of you, they will not come out.

Most gliders don't like to be held, we have 2 we can hold out of 7, the others will climb on our arm on their own, and we can pick them up but they DONT like it much (we still have one we cant pick up, she still bites).
It does seem females can take a little longer to get trusting but maybe that is cause we have more females and we started with 2 males and got them bonded first.

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Originally posted by Kandicav

I have had a female suggie since Sept 24th. 2 weeks ago I got a male suggie.

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You have just barely begun a long journey of building trust with a creature that is SOOO much smaller than you. Every instinct it has is telling it to escape or die trying. Be calm around them, and take your time. It can take several months at least in my experience.

Do you have, or can you get, a small one person tent? You may have read about "tent time". Set up the tent, grab a book or something to occupy your time, bring the girls into the tent in a pouch. Then just close the tent and let them out of the pouch, free to safely crawl around and on you for a little bit. I usually did it about 30 minutes a day. It gives them a chance to get used to your smell and realize you won't hurt them, since you don't interact with them more than being their jungle gym.

Don't go barefoot in the tent. Some gliders love to bite toes!

Thank you for your help. I just want to make sure that I'm not doing anything wrong. And I love the analogy. I stopped at Walmart on the way home and picked up a little kiddie tent. I'm sitting in it now with my little girl. She's running all over the place pooping and peeing and hopping around. She's not too interested in me yet, but she has jumped on me a few times. She just crawled up my back. ;). PROGRESS!!!