"Lauren Wilkins attends classes at Texas State University with the usual accessories of a college student: pens, cellphone, textbooks. Less noticeable are her pocket pets -- two tiny marsupials, one asleep in her blouse pocket, the other in her cargo pants.

"I'm the kind of person who if things get hectic, I like to feel fur," says Ms. Wilkins. So she shares her dorm room and her pockets with Jax and Dawson, exotic creatures known as sugar gliders.

The popular new campus residents, illegal in some states and banned in many dormitories, are nocturnal mammals (Petaurus breviceps) native to Australia. They get their common name from their penchant for sweets and their ability, in the wild, to soar more than a hundred feet. They can live to be 15.

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