I thought I'd post this for all the newbies as a lesson that I learned a tad bit too late.
Kiki and buster are in one cage, Jasper is in another. I haven't had time to try and start the potential
bonding process with them. Last week I took jasper out for tent time. We were in for five minutes before he decided he didn't want to be in the tent. Ok, fine, lets put you back in your cage.
Unfortunately jasper had other ideas. He leapt from my shoulder onto Kiki and buster's cage. Buster goes into attack mode almost immediately, and I go into panic mode because I don't know just how much damage they can do to each other through the bars. In a moment of sheer stupidity, possibly due to the panic not letting me think clearly, I try to pick Jasper up to get him away from the cage.
Big Mistake! In his rage, Jasper grips onto my index finger with strength not even Superman could match....band starts ripping into my finger! Nothing I did would distract him and tsking at him only made it worse! So now bleeding and feeling faint because of seeing blood, I do the only thing I could thing of: run into the bathroom and dunk him under the tap! He stops in shock, then realizes its me he is chewing on. He starts to groom me, but I'm too worried about my finger and possibly needing stitches to care, so into the cage he goes, with plenty of choice words for him (and yes, I know it's my own fault!) and clean up my finger.
Didn't look like I needed stitches, so lots of bactitracin and a bandaid.... And now a week later I'm thinking he did enough damage to make scar tissue so thick it feels like a callus.
The lesson here? Don't use your bare hands to separate fighting gliders.
