Possum Tales

I’ve got possums on the brain, and piles of possum drawings all over my table.

I like irony, and it appeals to me to have a character that most people find kind of unappealing. Of course, I’m one of those strange types that actually think possums are cute. My character is named after a flower (pretty and sweet?). I found lots of pictures of baby possums – they are funny and scrappy-looking.

We have many possums here and they occasionally wander into our yard. We have rats, too – I’m also fond of them, but not necessarily when they’re scurrying around my back yard. So possums are a welcome sight. They help keep the rat population under control.

We had one possum take up residence under our back deck for awhile. We named him Gulliver, and his travels back and forth through our yard kept us amused for some time. He wasn’t very stealthy; his clumsy scaling up and over the fence woke us up every night. During the day we could see his grey coat through the cracks in the deck. One day Gulliver wandered off, on to his next travel adventure.

Later we had a skunk move into Gulliver’s spot under the deck. We named her Petunia. We decided it was pressing our luck to have a skunk in such close proximity to the house, so we decided to have her relocated. We called someone to set a trap in the back yard. The very first night, we heard a commotion in the yard. The trap had worked! I couldn’t believe it had been that easy.

In the morning I went to get a peek at Petunia. I snuck up as quietly as I could so I wouldn’t frighten her. However, the beady eyes peering back at me belonged to a fat possum. Where did he come from? And where was Petunia?

The second night brought success. Petunia was ready to be taken to a new home further inland. The only problem was our yard has no access except through the house. A sticky situation would soon become a stinky one if poor Petunia got spooked. So I instructed the kids, as Elmer Fudd would say, to be vewy, vewy, quiet as Petunia was escorted through our family room.

After that I put a large owl decoy on the fence to try to discourage any more critters from moving into the yard. My husband watched one night as a young possum walked along the fence right up to the plastic owl, gave it a swat that sent it soaring off the fence, and kept right on going.