I had an interesting visitor to my backyard recently – a possum. I’m sure he is a frequent visitor, but only after dark. It’s rare to see a possum in the daytime, unless it’s in the form of a flattened carcass on the side of the road. Possums are not very good road-crossers.
This was a big possum, nice and fat, and would probably have made a nice roast, if you’re into possum meat. Thank you, but I’ll pass, though I hear they are good when cooked correctly.
There is a standing joke around my house about “playing possum”, when one family member pretends to be asleep. It brings to mind another encounter with a possum in my back yard, way back when I had a pen full of bird dogs. One night, I heard quite a commotion in the pen and was curious about the cause as I took out the evening meal. I had my flashlight to investigate and found my two English setters standing guard over a dead possum He was all slimy where the dogs had chewed on him and he had his tongue out, indicating quite a battle before the dogs obviously triumphed.
Anyway, I fed the dogs and returned to the pen with a shovel for the impending burial of said possum. Except there was no possum. While the dogs were eating, the resurrected possum took off, lickety split, and I doubt he ever returned to the pen, even to finish off a few juicy morsels remaining in the dogs’ food bowls.
Another time, as I was taking out trash to the back stoop, I heard the trash can rattling around. I looked inside, and sure enough, a possum had climbed in and couldn’t climb out. A tip of the trash can, and he was off. Possums can run pretty fast when given the chance.
Possums, opossums to be exact, are interesting critters. Natives of South America, over the years enough managed to make the trek between continents that they are now well distributed throughout the United States. Possums are marsupials, which if you recall from biology class, animals that carry their young in a pouch outside the womb. Gestation for the babies is only 10 to 12 days, and then they crawl to the mother’s pouch. They are weaned anywhere from 3 to 4 months.
The possum I saw looked exceptionally large, perhaps she had a bunch of little ones in her pouch. I think I’ll toss out a little extra corn in the mornings. The strange looking animals do no harm, and they are welcome in my back yard.
