It has been about five months since I last ran into a possum. I like possums. They eat rodents like rats, mice, squirrels, moles and voles. They don't dig up your yard or live in your house or bother your cats and dogs. They can be stinky but all in all they are good to have around.

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A baby that came by in Sept.

They're not all that kind to vine-ripe tomatoes, but otherwise I have no quarrel with them.

FWIW, I was walking a month or so ago and went to pet a cat on the sidewalk. Turned out it was a possum. I swear to god the thing meowed at me first. At least I thought it was.

was = did

Tonight I took the garbage out and met a big fat possum in my backyard.

In my head, this is the beginning of a country blues song. I think the next line might go something like, I woke up this morning, my possum was gone, da dada da da...

taz: heheh.

My biggest surprise was finding a possum in our backyard when we lived in Little Five Points in Atlanta. With a little research, I learned that possums had never been chased out of urban Atlanta because of the extensive networks of parks and wide swaths of naturally wild hillsides. One woman to whom I talked, a bigshot in the regional PETA, estimated that 5% of metro Atlanta has never been cleared; it is still virgin wilderness.

Possums are in that "so ugly they're cute" category, aren't they? I don't mind having them around, either.

Years ago we lived in a trailer in a wooded patch...I looked up at my open closet one day and five baby possums were lined up sitting on my canister vacuum. They'd gotten in thru the dryer vent.

During that time period an adult possum would also get into the house and my husband would have to capture it and fling it out the front door swinging by its tail. They are nasty vicious beasties with sharp teeth and they hiss.

But I still like them. As long as they are outside where they belong.

"five baby possums were lined up sitting on my canister vacuum" - aaaahhhhh! A missed Kodak moment.

Hey, I had a possum invasion last night, too; it was eating my cat's food after I'd left the back door open so kitty could wander in and out for a while. It saw me and just quietly turned and trotted back out the door and down the steps. I half-heartedly tossed something just to scare it a bit as it wandered off, but like arse_hat said, it doesn't bother me that they come around. They seem kind of smart and sly and quiet and generally nice.

Except for the time I went into the bathroom drunk one night, started to pee and accidentally cornered one crouched and hissing next to the toilet. That was fun.

There's a HUGE one who lives near me, like, easily 20, 25 pounds. I see him every so often early in the morning when I'm walking the dogs and he's going home. He fears nothing and noone and walks down the center of the street like a drunken sailor and my dogs hug my legs and pretend they haven't seen him.

I don't think we have possum here in NYC (maybe upstate) but we do have gigantic rats. Maybe we should import some possum to take care of that population. Of course, our rats are pretty tough bastards so the possum would have to drop that whole "nice" thing.

That "nice" thing is a big act; possums can be vicious little bastards. They are fairly strong and can be quite fast over short distances. I'll bet mygothlaundry's dogs have already had a tangle or two with a possum and are now showing respect.

*sees about importing some possum*

George had this little old farm cat, Smokey (she's still going strong, aged 20+). She would get a handful of kibble every day and whatever protein she could catch. But she absolutely loved me because whenever I visited, I would buy her lovely canned catfood and sneak it to her. She used to hop up onto the woodpile and from there onto the kitchen windowsill and stuff her little face.

Well, one evening I glanced out of the window and saw what I thought was the rear and of a huge rat disappearing into the woodpile. A few minutes later it reappeared on the windowsill, peering in. It was a possum, and had been attracted by the bits of catfood Smokey had spilled.

George was about to fetch his .22 (they are really not welcome additions to farmlife) but I whined until he relented. I looked through the window into its little black eyes and told it to go away and not come back. I didn't hold out much hope, I thought it'd be back with all its family the next day, but it never came back. At least, I'm sure it didn't, although it's possible that it was 'disappeared' when I was out somewhere.

The possums I grew up with in Australia are very different from North American possums. If you can imagine what the offspring of a possum mated with a sugar glider would look like ... well, here's one.
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Several years ago a family member who has a cookie/bread delivery route gave us an assortment of cookies in various plastic containers. We ate some, but many of the cookies were not liked by the kids, so my husband tossed them in the garbage. We arrived home one evening, and as we went up the steps to the house, I glanced in the garbage can. Curled up at the bottom was a very large, very overfed possum. He had eaten every single cookie we had thrown out, and now could not climb out of the can. I got the kids inside, waited a little bit so it got darker, then very gently tipped the can over. It took a little while, but eventually he staggered away in the night. I think they are cute, too.