Sugar Bears are officially part of Gaspee Days.

You read it correctly. Sugar Bears, not gummy bears or sugar daddies, although it’s always a good thing to bring along a sugar daddy when visiting the Gaspee Days Arts and Crafts Festival that opened Saturday and ran through the Memorial Day weekend.

Sugar Bears, marsupials native to Australia and Indonesia, are slightly larger than a chipmunk with markings like a raccoon and a temperament that made them an instant attraction to festival visitors of all ages. There was a perpetual crowd before the booth operated by PocketPets, a company based in Tennessee that introduces the Sugar Bears, also known as Sugar Gliders for their ability to jump distances, at festivals throughout the country.

“They bond with you at an early age,” said Ashley Jones as she took her pet out of her shirt pocket and handed it to one of many onlookers. The Sugar Bear was not in the least startled walking down the arm of Yu Ping as her friend snapped pictures on her phone and talked excitedly. Jones, meanwhile talked about the easy care of Sugar Bears, how they get along with cats and dogs and, as they are not rodents, they don’t chew up things.

Stories are the treasures of the arts and crafts festival, even though in the discovery of the unusual and things creative, people fail to ask how a vendor came to do what they do.

Take May Moua who started working the festival with her mother about 30 years ago. May came to this country from Laos, where her brother was killed by a hand grenade during the Vietnam War. The Mouas and many who came to the United States are Hmong, who fought beside Americans during the war. When May and her mother started selling needlepoint table runners and handmade stuffed animals at the festival, many of the works depicted battle scenes from the war. That has changed with scenes from the jungle and the farming life in Laos and even Christmas, all done in fine needle point, showing the crèche, the wise men and the baby Jesus.

May’s daughters now help in making stuffed animals for the festival, although they weren’t working the booth Saturday morning. May sold a fabric bracelet to Caitlin Kelly. It was just $1. And as Kelly and her friend Elizabeth Santos looked over the display of tablecloths with their intricate designs and scenes, May described a farm scene from the harvesting of bananas to the milling of wheat. The girls had just been given a tour of a foreign land.

Nearby, Katie Corticelli of Foster sat behind a display of glass octopus, miniature paperweights with a galaxy of colors and hanging from a ring glass hummingbirds. Katie works 40 hours a week from her basement where she blows glass.

“It’s my full time gig,” she said. She does an average of two shows a month. Her favorite creation, at least for now, are octopi that she recreates in many colors, just as the mollusk are known for.

Glenn Milowski of The Frog Pond of Cutchogue, NY, purveyor of hand carved wooden animals all capable of reproducing the sound of the animal they represent, was not all that far away from the Sugar Bears. Glenn stroked the ribbed backs of wooden frogs with a stick to reproduce the sound of spring peppers to bull frogs. He blew on wolf, cow and elephant carvings and surely he had a crowd of spectators and a few buyers.

Diane Berard, a teacher from Westport, had another story.

“I love leather,” she said explaining her display of leather bracelets and chokers with silver ornamentation. She had a steady stream of interested potential buyers who struggled to open the clasp.

“Like this,” said Diane twisting the sides of the clasp to release its magnetic hold. It’s a clasp Diane designed out of a personal need. She has arthritis.

It was the live Sugar Bears, however, that were hard to beat for a crowd pleaser. Some spectators questioned whether they could be sold and turned to their cell phones to search the Department of Environmental Management website. Saturday, however, was just too bright a day to allow for easy reading off a phone.

That would have made for yet another type of story, although PocketPets wasn’t selling the animals on the spot. “Adoption” requires a consultation and informational session on how to care for the animals. A complete setup with cage, food – they eat fruit and vegetables and earned the name Sugar Bears for the preference of sweet fruit and their cousins, koala bears – costs $589. A second bear is $300.

And then some stories are familiar and that’s what makes the festival and the Gaspee Days celebration that continues this Saturday with the concert in the park by the Warwick Symphony Orchestra followed by fireworks and the signature parade on June 9 such an intimate community event.

Janice Rooney vouched for that Saturday as she tended the popcorn machine next to the committee booth. She’s lost track of how many years she’s worked on the Gaspee Days celebration…maybe 30 – which makes her a contemporary of May Moua, just with a different story.