The first time our resident opossum and I met in the dark on a tiny, enclosed back porch was traumatic for both of us.
I may have screamed. He may have hissed.
We made hasty retreats in opposite directions—he back through the broken pet door he had rudely entered.
The next night, my husband caught him in a humane trap, took him to the farthest corner of our back pasture and shook his seemingly dead body out of the trap. He was “playing possum.” And he had already developed a taste for the cat food we keep on the back porch.
He was back the next day.
After his return from eviction, I looked up some fascinating facts about him.
In spite of their naked, ratlike tails, opossums are not rodents. They are the only marsupial—pouched mammal—native to North America and have been around for 70 million years, once coexisting with dinosaurs. Their short life span, one to two years, is due to their many predators—dogs, coyotes and humans.
There are 65 species of opossums, and all are related to kangaroos and koalas. While the only species that populates the U.S. is the Virginia opossum, others reside in Central America, South America, Australia and New Guinea.
Opossums are not aggressive. Their open-mouthed hissing is a bluff—but with 50 teeth, more than any other North American land mammal, it worked on me. If hissing isn’t successful, they feign death, falling on their sides with tongue extended in hopes that predators will lose interest and move on. If the predator decides to call this ultimate bluff, the opossum is a sitting duck.
Opossums have a number of redeeming qualities. They eat cockroaches, ticks, crickets, spiders, beetles and June bugs and find snails and slugs a delightful delicacy. We once had an infestation of slugs, which left their slimy, silvery trails all over the sidewalks, storm doors, back porch and the bowl of cat food. Since our opossum began his nightly visits, the slugs have been vanquished. Eureka!
Opossums, which can hiss and foam at the mouth as defense mechanisms, get a bum rap. They almost never carry rabies because their body temperature is too low to sustain the virus. President Benjamin Harrison kept two pet opossums in the White House. President Herbert Hoover had one too.
Our little visitor doesn’t kill chickens, nor does he tip over the garbage cans.
He has learned to coexist with our cats, who are too fat and lazy to stay up for his late-night visits.
So I guess we won’t be installing a new pet door any time soon. He’s welcome to his cat food appetizer.
