At least once a year I will get someone ask me if I feed meal worms to my gliders. I always have the same response. No, I do not feed mealworms to my gliders. I am always asked why. So after explaining to the last person they suggested I put my story out there once again, just to show what can happen, although I have never heard of another case of it other than my own.
Back in 2009 Meadow was part of a successful trio. Both her and Pandora had joeys come out of pouch at the same time. Pandora had a single and Meadow had a set of twins. Everything seemed fine. The twins were just a couple weeks OOP.
I had a friend come in from out of town and she wanted to see the joeys, so of course we got them out. The joeys seemed very wet and I had no idea why. We checked the pouch and it was not wet. I then checked Meadows pouch and it was indeed very wet. I scheduled an appointment with the
vet and took Meadow in. An exoskeleton of a mealworm had been crusted over inside on her pouch wall. I had to pull Meadow out of her trio and take her joeys away from her while she was being treated for a bad infection. A couple of days later I took her out for her daily meds and wanted to take a look at her pouch to see if it looked to be doing better and lo and behold her entire cloaca was GONE.... no blood anywhere, she was not messing with it or seeming to be sm'ing. We kept an eye on her and she healed up just fine...she just does not have a visual cloaca, but a large hole instead. Meadow was never in an e-collar or e-jacket.
Meadow still goes into heat every month, and is the LOUDEST female of all in my glider room. She urinates and defecates just fine. She is super healthy, however, she will never be able to have a cage mate, but she is happy and ok with that.
As for her joeys, they were taken on by their aunt Pandora and did fine and went off to live happily every after with Melinda.
So, I tell people, to me, it is just not worth the risk to feed a meal worm, not to mention, it is not even the type of 'bugs, grubs, insects' they eat in the wild and are higher in fat than anything else.