After finding some gliders living in a nesting box at his place, Tom Curtis recently pondered whether they had a better life than him. He wondered whether life would be calmer as a possum, without all the worries that Covid-19 and other crazy world events have brought. In response he received a letter from a marsupial living in the big Moreton Bay Ash in his garden. 

Dear Tom,
Thank you for your letter asking to become a glider and live in our tree. This raises a couple of points. Firstly, we don't have any magical powers to turn people into small and incredibly-cute marsupials. If you therefore remain at 65kg, with no gliding membranes between your arms and legs, we think you will struggle to survive launching yourself into space from a 30ft Moreton Bay Ash.

Secondly, your reference to the human world going "pear-shaped" fails to mention that humans have also made our world go pear-shaped. Outside this wildlife-friendly property on which you are lucky enough to live, there are fewer and fewer nice old trees in Australia, and the ones that haven't been cut down are burning down due to human-induced climate change.

It's also not much fun being eaten by cats or getting caught on barbed wire. We ourselves recently applied to become dolphins. We quote from their own letter of reply: "Are you insane? There aren't enough fish in the ocean any more and it's full of plastic."

Overall we think it's best if you stay a human and do what you can to make sure there are some animals left for people to wonder over in the future, and environments for them and you to live in.

Regards,
The Gliders.